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KARL

MARX

FREDERICK

ENGELS

Collected

Works

°§§°

Wume 5

Marx and Engds
1845-1847

Contents

Preface XIII

KARL MARX AND FREDERICK ENGELS
WORKS

April 1845-April 1847

Karl Marx. Theses on Feuerbach [Original version] 3

Karl Marx. Theses on Feuerbach [Edited by Engels] 6

Frederick Engels. Feuerbach j i

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. A Reply to Bruno Bauer’s Anti-

Critique 15

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. The German Ideology. Critique of
Modern German Philosophy According to Its Representatives Feuerbach,

B. Bauer and Stimer, and of German Socialism According to Its Various
Prophets . 19

Volume I. Critique of Modern German Philosophy According to Its
Representatives Feuerbach, B. Bauer and Stimer 21

Preface ... 23

I. Feuerbach. Opposition of the Materialist and Idealist Outlooks 27

[1] 27

[l.J Ideology in General, German Ideology in Particular 28

[2. Premises of the Materialist Conception of History] .. 31

[3. Production and Intercourse. Division of Labour and Forms of

Property — Tribal, Ancient, Feudal] 32

[4. The Essence of the Materialist Conception of History. Social Being

and Social Consciousness] , 35

[II] 38

[ 1 . Preconditions of the Real Liberation of Man] 38

[2. Feuerbach’s Contemplative and Inconsistent Materialism] 38

Contents

[3. Primary Historical Relations, or the Basic Aspects of Social Activity:
Production of the Means of Subsistence, Production of New Needs,
Reproduction of Men (the Family), Social Intercourse, Conscious-
ness] 41

[4. Social Division of Labour and Its Consequences: Private Property, the

State, “Estrangement” of Social Activity] 46

[5. Development of the Productive Forces as a Material Premise of

Communism] 48

[6. Conclusions from the Materialist Conception of History: History as a
Continuous Process, History as Becoming World History, the Necessi-
ty of Communist Revolution] 50

[7. Summary of the Materialist Conception of History] 53

[8. The Inconsistency of the Idealist Conception of History in General

and of German post-Hegelian Philosophy in Particular] 55

[9. Idealist Conception of History and Feuerbach’s Quasi-

Communism] 57

[III] 59

[1. The Ruling Class and the Ruling Ideas. How the Hegelian Conception

of the Domination of the Spirit in History Arose] 59

[IV] 63

[ 1 . Instruments of Production and Forms of Property] 63

[2. The Division of Material and Mental Labour. Separation of Town and

Country. The Guild-System] 64

[3. Further Division of Labour. Separation of Commerce and Industry.

Division of Labour between the Various Towns. Manufacture] 66

[4. Most Extensive Division of Labour. Large-Scale Industry] 72

[5. The Contradiction between the Productive Forces and the Form of

Intercourse as the Basis of Social Revolution] 74

[6. Competition of Individuals and the Formation of Classes. Contradic-
tion between Individuals and Their Conditions of Life. The Illusory
Community of Individuals in Bourgeois Society and the Real Union of
Individuals under Communism. Subordination of the Social Condi-
tions of Life to the Power of the United Individuals] 75

[7. Contradiction between Individuals and Their Conditions of Life as
Contradiction between the Productive Forces and the Form of
Intercourse. Development of the Productive Forces and the Changing

Forms of Intercourse] 81

[8. The Role of Violence (Conquest) in History] 84

[9. Contradiction between the Productive Forces and the Form of
Intercourse under the Conditions of Large-Scale Industry and Free

Competition. Contradiction between Labour and Capital] 85

[10. The Necessity, Preconditions and Consequences of the Abolition of

Private Property] 87

[11.] The Relation of State and Law to Property 89

[12. Forms of Social Consciousness] 92

Contents VII

The Leipzig Council ; 94

II. Saint Bruno 97

1. “Campaign” against Feuerbach 97

2. Saint Bruno’s Views on the Struggle between Feuerbach and Stirner 105

3. Saint Bruno versus the Authors of Die Heilige Familie 107

4. Obituary for “M. Hess” 114

III. Saint Max 117

1. The Unique and His Property 119

The Old Testament: Man 121

1. The Book of Genesis, i.e., A Man’s Life 121

2. The Economy of the Old Testament 130

3. The Ancients 136

4. The Moderns 144

A. The Spirit (Pure History of Spirits) 148

B. The Possessed (Impure History of Spirits) 152

a) The Apparition 157

b) Whimsy 160

C. The Impurely Impure History of Spirits 103

a) Negroes and Mongols 163

b) Catholicism and Protestantism 170

D. Hierarchy 172

5. “Stirner” Delighted in His Construction 185

6. The Free Ones 193

A. Political Liberalism 193

B. Communism 205

C. Humane Liberalism 232

The New Testament: “Ego” 240

1. The Economy of the New Testament 240

2. The Phenomenology of the Egoist in Agreement with

Himself, or the Theory of Justification 242

3. The Revelation of John the Divine, or “The Logic of the New

Wisdom” 272

4. Peculiarity 301

5. The Owner 315

A. My Power 315

I. Right 315

A. Canonisation in General 315

B. Appropriation by Simple Antithesis 319

C. Appropriation by Compound Antithesis 321

II. Law 327

III. Crime 336

VIII

Contents

A. Simple Canonisation of Crime and Punishment 337

a. Crime ; 337

b. Punishment . 339

B. Appropriation of Crime and Punishment Through Antithesis 340

C. Crime in the Ordinary and Extraordinary Sense 343

[B. My Intercourse] 346

[I. Society] 346

5. Society as Bourgeois Society 348

II. Rebellion 377

III. Union 389

1. Landed Property 389

2. Organisation of Labour 391

3. Money 395

4. State 399

5. Rebellion 402

6. Religion and Philosophy of the Union 403

A. Property 403

B. Wealth 407

C. Morality, Intercourse, Theory of Exploitation 408

D. Religion 414

E. Supplement to the Union 415

C. My Self-Enjoyment 417

6. Solomon’s Song of Songs or the Unique 427

2. Apologetical Commentary -444

Close of the Leipzig Council 451

Volume II. Critique of German Socialism According to Its Various
Prophets 453

True Socialism 455

I. Die Rheinischen Jahrbucher or the Philosophy of True Socialism 458

A. “Communismus, Socialismus, Humanismus” 458

B. “Socialisdsche Bausteine” 470

First Cornerstone 474

Second Cornerstone 477

Third Cornerstone 480

IV. Karl Griin: Die Soziale Bewegung in Frankreich und Belgien (Darmstadt,

1845) or the Historiography of True Socialism 484

Saint-Simonism 493

1 . Lettres d'un habitant de Geneve d ses Contemporains 498

2. Catechisme politique des Industriels 500

Contents

S. Nouveau christianisme 503

4. The School of Saint-Simon 504

Fourierism . 510

•The “Limitations of Papa Cabet” and Herr Grun 519

Proudhon 529

V. “Doctor Georg Kuhlmann of Holstein” or the Prophecies of True

Socialism 531

Frederick Engels. The T rue Socialists 540

NOTES AND INDEXES

Notes 585

Name Index 609

Index of Quoted and Mentioned Literature . 627

Index of Periodicals 64 1

Subject Index .... 645

ILLUSTRATIONS

Facsimile of Thesis 1 1 on Feuerbach. From Marx’s notebook 9

First page of the Preface to The German Ideology in Marx’s handwriting 25

A page of the manuscript of The German Ideology. From the chapter

“Feuerbach” ( Discovered in the early 1 960s) 34-35

A page of the manuscript of The German Ideology. From the chapter

“Feuerbach” 34“ 35

A page of the manuscript of The German Ideology. From the chapter

“Saint Max” ...226-227

Max Stimer. Drawing by Engels 267

First page of Chapter IV (Volume II) of The German Ideology as published
in the Westpholische Dampfboot No. 8, 1847 487

translators:

CLEMENS DUTT: The German Ideology (Volume I,
“The Leipzig Council”) and “The True So-
cialists”

W. LOUGH: The German Ideology (Volume I, Chapter I,
“Feuerbach”)

C. P. MAGILL: The German Ideology (Volume II)

Preface

The fifth volume of the Collected Works of Karl Marx and
Frederick Engels contains a major joint work of the founders of
Marxism, The German Ideology, together with the writings immediate-
ly connected with it.

They were all written between the spring of 1845 and the spring of
1847, during Marx’s stay in Brussels, where he moved in February
1845 following his deportation from France by the Guizot govern-
ment. Engels came to Brussels from Barmen in April 1845 and
remained till August 1846. This was the period when Marxism
was finally evolved as the scientific world outlook of the revolu-
tionary proletariat. Marx and Engels had arrived at the decisive
stage in working out the philosophical principles of scientific com-
munism.

It was in The German Ideology that the materialist conception of
history, historical materialism, was first formulated as an integral
theory. Engels said later that this theory, which uncovered the gen-
uine laws of social development and revolutionised the science of
society, embodied the first of Marx’s great discoveries (the second
being the theory of surplus value) which played the main role in
transforming socialism from a utopia into a science. The German
Ideology is in effect the first mature work of Marxism. It immediately
preceded the first published mature Marxist writings — The Poverty of
Philosophy and the Manifesto of the Communist Party.

During the period when The German Ideology and the works closely
connected with it were being written, Marx and Engels devoted their
main efforts to joint theoretical and practical work aimed at setting
out the revolutionary communist teaching and rallying around it the
progressive elements of the proletariat and the revolutionary
intelligentsia. Summing up the tasks they set themselves at that time,

XIV

Preface

Engels wrote later, in his work “On the History of the Communist
League”: “We were both already deeply involved in the political
movement, and possessed a certain following in the educated world,
especially of Western Germany, and abundant contact with the
organised proletariat. It was our duty to provide a scientific
foundation for our view, but it was equally important for us to win
over the European and in the first place the German proletariat to
our conviction.”

Early in 1846, Marx and Engels founded the Brussels Communist
Correspondence Committee, which took steps to establish interna-
tional contacts between the participants in the working-class
movement, to spread the new communist ideas and to prepare the
ground for the creation of a revolutionary proletarian party. In
August 1846, Engels, on the Committee’s instructions, moved to
Paris to develop revolutionary propaganda among the German and
French workers.

The new revolutionary outlook of Marx and Engels was ham-
mered out in struggle with bourgeois and petty-bourgeois ideology.
They directed their criticism in the first place against the idealist
conception of history inherent in German post-Hegelian philosophy,
including that of Ludwig Feuerbach, whose materialist views were
inconsistent and essentially metaphysical.

The volume opens with Marx’s “Theses on Feuerbach”, of which
Engels wrote in 1888 that they are “invaluable as the first document
in which is deposited the brilliant germ of the new world outlook”
(Foreword to Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German
Philosophy).

The “Theses on Feuerbach” were written in connection with the
project of The German Ideology and represent the initial draft of a
number of general ideas for the first chapter of this work. Nearly all
the basic propositions of the “Theses” were further developed in
The German Ideology. Essentially, they counterpose against contem-
plative and passive pre-Marxian materialism the dialectical materialist
conception of the decisive role of material practice in human
cognition. Practice, Marx stressed, is the starting point, the basis, the
criterion and the purpose of all cognition, including philosophical
theory. And in order to become an effective and active factor of
social development, theory must be embodied in living revolutionary
practical activity.

In the “Theses on Feuerbach” Marx put forward the materialist
conception of “the essence of man”. In opposition to Feuerbach,
who had only an abstract conception of “man” in isolation from
social relations and historical reality, Marx emphasised that real

Preface

men could only be understood as products of social relations. Marx
then went much further than Feuerbach in the critical comprehen-
sion of religion and the ways of overcoming it. He pointed out that it
was not enough to understand the earthly basis of religion. The
condition for eliminating religion, the “Theses” underline, is the
revolutionary elimination of the social contradictions which give rise
to it.

Particularly important is the eleventh thesis, which says: “The
philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the
point is to change it” (see this volume, p. 5). Marx himself separated
this thesis from the preceding ten, as though underlining its
summarising character. We must understand the world in order to
change it, instead of interpreting it one way or another in order to
reconcile ourselves with what exists. Such in substance is the true
meaning of this thesis. Organically connected with it is another
thought. The world cannot be changed by merely changing our
notions of it, by theoretically criticising what exists; it must be
understood, and then, proceeding from this, transformed by
effective action, material revolutionary practice. This thesis
concisely formulates the fundamental difference of Marxist
philosophy from all earlier philosophy, including pre-Marxian
materialism. It concentrates into a single sentence the effective,
transforming character of the revolutionary theory created by
Marx and Engels, its inseparable connection with revolutionary
practice.

The basic principles of the new scientific world outlook, which
Marx had formulated in the “Theses on Feuerbach”, were
developed in The German Ideology. This work comprises two volumes.
Volume I is devoted to criticism of the views of Ludwig Feuerbach,
Bruno Bauer and Max Stirner, and Volume II to criticism of “true
socialism”. Despite all the efforts of Marx and Engels to have The
German Ideology published, it did not appear in print during their
lifetime, except for one chapter of Volume II. This circumstance
does not, however, diminish its significance. In working on The
German Ideology , Marx and Engels first and foremost clarified to
themselves the basic aspects of the new world outlook. “We
abandoned the manuscript to the gnawing criticism of the mice all
the more willingly as we had achieved our main purpose — self-
clarification,” Marx wrote in 1859 in the preface to A Contribution to
the Critique of Political Economy. The conclusions Marx and Engels
reached constituted the theoretical basis for all their further
scientific and political activity. They were able to impart them to
their closest associates — future prominent proletarian revolu-

XVI

Preface

tionaries. And they soon found an opportunity of making their
conclusions public after giving them a more finished and perfect
form. This was done in The Poverty of Philosophy, by Marx, and the
Manifesto of the Communist Party, by Marx and Engels.

The German Ideology is remarkable for the great wealth and variety
of its content, since the ideas developed in it relate to many aspects of
the revolutionary teaching which was taking shape. Thus profound
thoughts were expressed on questions pertaining to the theory and
history of the state and of law, to linguistics, aesthetics and literary
criticism. Not only were post-Hegelian philosophy and “true
socialism” subjected to a detailed critical analysis, but digressions
were also made into the history of philosophy and of socialist
theories. And the new materialist interpretation of the history of
social thought was in particular reflected in the positive treatment of
the great social thinkers of the past.

The German Ideology is the continuation of previous works by Marx
and Engels, mainly of the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts
of 1844 and The Holy Family, and in a sense synthesises the ideas
contained in them. At the same time, an immense step forward was
made to a qualitatively new stage in the development of the
philosophical foundations of the revolutionary proletarian outlook.
It was in this work that for the first time the materialist way of under-
standing history became an integral conception of the structure of
society and of historical periodisation. By virtue of the general
dialectical law of the transformation of theory into method and of
the unity of world oudook and method, organically inherent in the
new revolutionary teaching, this conception appears in The German
Ideology not only as the theory of society, but also as the method of
understanding social and historical phenomena. Marx and Engels
gave science a powerful weapon for the knowledge of social life, a
means of elucidating both the general course of social development
and the existing social relations. Thus they made possible the
comprehension of social processes which is necessary for active and
revolutionary interference in them. Marx himself saw in this work
the methodological prerequisite for a new political economy. In a
letter to the German publisher Leske on August 1, 1846, he pointed
out that the publication of a polemical work against the German
philosophers was necessary in order to prepare readers for his point
of view in the field of economic science.

The German Ideology is a polemical work. Criticism of views
hostile to the proletarian world oudook occupies a predominant
place in it, often couched in a biting satirical form which gives it
particular force and expressiveness. In the course of their attacks,

Preface

XVII

Marx and Engels continually counterposed their own point of view
to the views they were criticising.

Chapter I of Volume I of The German Ideology occupies a special
place in the work as a whole. Unlike the other chapters, which are
mainly polemical, it was conceived as a general introduction
expounding the materialist conception of history. The basic
theoretical content of the whole work is indeed concentrated in this
chapter.

First of all Marx and Engels formulate the “premises” of the
materialist conception of history. These premises are the real living
people, their activity and the material conditions under which they
live, both the conditions which they find already existing and those
produced by their activity. Thus, what is underlined here is the
historical character of the material conditions themselves, which are
increasingly influenced by people’s activity. And there are two sides
to it. First, production (people’s active relation to nature, their
influence on it), and, secondly, intercourse (people’s relations to one
another in their activity). Production and intercourse determine each
other, but the decisive side of this mutual action is production.
Subsequently, Marx and Engels introduced the term “relations of
production” to distinguish the social relations people enter into in
production, which are the basic relations underlying everything
included under the term “intercourse”.

In The German Ideology Marx and Engels not only developed in all
its aspects the thesis of the decisive role of material production in the
life of society, which they had already formulated in their previous
works, they also revealed for the first time the dialectics of the
development of the productive forces and the relations of produc-
tion. This most important discovery was formulated here as the
dialectics of the productive forces and the form of intercourse. It
illuminated the whole conceptual system of historical materialism
and made it possible to expound the substance of the materialist way
of understanding history as an integral scientific conception.

This discovery' can be reduced to the following propositions. The
productive forces determine the form of intercourse (social rela-
tions). At a certain stage of their development, the productive forces
come into contradiction with the existing form of intercourse. This
contradiction is resolved by social revolutions. In the place of the
previous form of intercourse, which has become a fetter, a new one is
evolved which corresponds to the more developed productive forces.
Subsequently, this new form of intercourse in its turn ceases to
correspond to £he developing productive forces, turns into their
fetter and is replaced by an ensuing, historically more progressive

2—2086

XVIII

Preface

form of intercourse. Thus, in the course of the entire historical
development a link of continuity is established between successive
stages. In disclosing the laws of social development, Marx and Engels
arrived at a conclusion of immense significance: “... All collisions in
history have their origin, according to our view, in the contradiction
between the productive forces and the form of intercourse” (see this
volume, p. 74).

The discovery of the laws of social development provided the key to
the scientific understanding of the entire historical process. It served
as the point of departure for the scientific periodisation of history.
Thus, as Lenin commented: “His [Marx’s] historical materialism was
a great achievement in scientific thinking. The chaos and arbitrari-
ness that had previously reigned in views on history and politics were
replaced by a strikingly integral and harmonious scientific theory,
which shows how, in consequence of the growth of the productive
forces, out of one system of social life another and higher system
develops — how capitalism, for instance, grows out of feudalism”
( Collected Works, Vol. 19, p. 25).

In The German Ideology Marx and Engels investigated the basic
determinants of the sequence of phases in the historical development
of social production. They showed that the outward expression of
the level of development of the productive forces is always to be
found in that of the division of labour. Each stage in the division of
labour determines a corresponding form of property and, as Marx
subsequently pointed out, the property relations are but “the legal
expression” of the relations of production. The transition from
primary historical relations to the ensuing stage in social develop-
ment was determined by the development of the productive forces,
resulting in the transition from an initial, natural division of labour
to the social division of labour in the form which is expressed in the
division of society into classes. This was the transition from pre-class
to class society.

Along with the social division of labour there develop such
derivative historical phenomena as private property, the state and
the “estrangement” of social activity. Just as the natural division of
labour in primitive society determines the first, tribal (family) form
of property so the increasing social division of labour determines the
further development and change of the forms of property. The
second form of property is the “ancient communal and state
property”, the third form is “feudal or estate property” and the
fourth is “bourgeois property”. The singling out and analysis of
forms of property which successively replace one another and
dominate at different stages of historical development provided the

basis for the scientific Marxist theory of the social formations, the
successive replacement of which is the principal feature of the whole
historical process.

Marx and Engels examined the last, the bourgeois, form of private
property in greater detail than the other historical forms of
property, tracing its transition from the guild-system to manufacture
and large-scale industry. This was the first time that these two
principal stages in the development of bourgeois society, the
manufacture period and the period of large-scale industry, had been
singled out and analysed. Marx had already demonstrated in the
Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 that the emer-
gence of private property was historically conditioned, that it
must necessarily come into being at a certain stage in the
development of human society, and also that it must inevitably be
subsequently abolished. It was proved in The German Ideology that it
is only with the development of large-scale industry that the material
conditions are created for the abolition of private property in the
means of production. And it becomes evident that this abolition is
necessary.

Proceeding from production to the sphere of intercourse, i.e., of
social relations, the social system, Marx and Engels gave a materialist
interpretation of the class structure of society and demonstrated the
role of classes and the class struggle in social life. In The German
Ideology, as compared with the Economic and Philosophic Manu-
scripts of 1844 and The Holy Family, the Marxist theory of classes
and class struggle acquired mature features — those very features
which, as Marx noted in his letter to Weydemeyer of March 5, 1852,
distinguished this theory from the progressive bourgeois historians’
understanding of class struggle. It was demonstrated that the
division of society into antagonistic classes and the existence of
classes are connected with definite stages in the development of
production, that the development of the class struggle must
necessarily lead to a communist revolution carried out by the pro-
letariat, and that this revolution will result in the abolition of classes
and the creation of a classless society.

In The German Ideology considerable attention is devoted to the
political superstructure, and in particular to the relation of the state
and law to property. For the first time the essence of the state in
general and the bourgeois state in particular was revealed. “... The
state is the form in which the individuals of a ruling class assert their
common interests, and in which the whole civil society of an epoch is
epitomised” (see this volume, p. 90). In analysing the class nature and
the main functions of the state at the capitalist stage of development,

Preface

Marx and Engels pointed out that the bourgeois state “is nothing
more than the form of organisation which the bourgeois are
compelled to adopt, both for internal and external purposes, for the
mutual guarantee of their property and interests” (see this volume,
p. 90).

In dealing with the various forms of social consciousness, the
ideological superstructure, Marx and Engels made clear the general
correlation between the material sphere and the sphere of conscious-
ness. Of particular importance is the classical formulation of the
materialist solution to this basic question of philosophy: “Conscious-
ness [das Bewusstsein ] can never be anything else than conscious being
[das bewusste Sein], and the being of men is their actual life-process....
It is not consciousness that determines life, but life that determines
consciousness” (see this volume, pp. 36-37). The formation of
consciousness is immensely influenced by the class structure of
society. In their work Marx and Engels disclosed the class origins
of the various forms of consciousness and showed that in a class
society the dominating consciousness is the consciousness of the
ruling class.

Summing up the substance of the materialist conception of history,
Marx and Engels wrote: “This conception of history thus relies on
expounding the real process of production — starting from the
material production of life itself — and comprehending the form of
intercourse connected with and created by this mode of production,
i.e., civil society in its various stages, as the basis of all history;
describing it in its action as the state, and also explaining how all the
different theoretical products and forms of consciousness, religion,
philosophy, morality, etc., etc., arise from it, and tracing the process
of their formation from that basis; thus the whole thing can, of
course, be depicted in its totality (and therefore, too, the reciprocal
action of these various sides on one another). It has not, like the
idealist view of history, to look for a category in every period, but
remains constantly on the real ground of history; it does not explain
practice from the idea but explains the formation of ideas from
material practice, and accordingly it comes to the conclusion that ...
not criticism but revolution is the driving force of history, also of
religion, of philosophy and all other kinds of theory” (see this
volume, pp. 53-54).

In their subsequent scientific work, Marx and Engels constantly
developed and deepened their materialist conception of history and
perfected the method of historical materialism by applying it in the
various fields of the social sciences. The whole system of con-
cepts — which in The German Ideology still bears the stamp of the

Preface

XXI

formation process of the conception itself — was thus elaborated and
made more precise, and the basic explanatory ideas of historical ma-
terialism were expressed in a more adequate terminology. In later
works of Marx and Engels the various aspects of the concept “mode
of production”, a basic term in historical materialism, were
expounded; the internal law of development of the modes of
production began to be formulated in terms of the dialectical
interaction of productive forces and relations of production, and the
latter were shown to play the main, decisive role — as was made clear
already in The German Ideology — in the system of social relations. The
term “social formation” first appeared in Marx’s economic manu-
script of 1857-58, Critique of Political Economy (the so-called Grund-
risse), and the concept “social-economic formation” was first thor-
oughly expounded in the preface to his A Contribution to the Critique
of Political Economy ( 1 859), thus providing for the better understand-
ing of the successive replacement of social formations, the general
outline of which was given in The German Ideology. It should be
noted, too, that in the light of the subsequent development of the
theory of scientific communism it becomes evident that, in speaking
in The German Ideology of the “abolition of the division of labour”,
and even of the “abolition of labour”, in communist society, Marx
and Engels had in mind only the division of labour in the conditions
of class-divided society — with its antithesis between mental and
physical labour and people being tied down to certain occupations
and professions — and, in particular, the capitalist form of the
exploitation of labour, not work and its organisation in general.

The classical formulation of the basic propositions of the
materialist conception of history was later set down by Marx in the
already-mentioned preface to his book A Contribution to the Critique of
Political Economy.

This scientific materialist theory of social development served
Marx and Engels as the theoretical foundation for their conclusions
about the communist transformation of society. The principal
conclusion from the materialist conception of history, already
substantiated in The German Ideology, is the historical necessity of a
proletarian, communist revolution. Marx and Engels stressed that
“for the practical materialist, i.e., the communist, it is a question
of revolutionising the existing world, of practically coming to
grips with and changing the things found in existence” (see this
volume, pp. 38-39).

The development of the productive forces within bourgeois society,
Marx and Engels pointed out, provides the two basic material
premises of a communist revolution. These are: first, a high

XXII

Preface

level of production, which is incompatible with private property and
at the same time is necessary for the organisation of society on a
communist basis; and, secondly, mass proletarianisation, the forma-
tion of the proletariat, the most revolutionary class in modern
society. This definition of the premises of a communist revolution
is one of the fundamental conclusions of scientific communism
contained in The German Ideology.

It was in The German Ideology that Marx and Engels first spoke of
the necessity for the proletariat to conquer political power as the only
way of carrying out a communist revolution. They pointed out:
“... Every class which is aiming at domination, even when its
domination, as is the case with the proletariat, leads to the abolition of
the old form of society in its entirety and of all domination, must first
conquer political power” (see this volume, p. 47). Thus we find
expressed for the first time the idea of the dictatorship of the
proletariat, though as yet only in a most general form.

Marx and Engels stressed that a communist revolution is a dual
process: a change in people’s conditions of life, and at the same time
a change in the people themselves who carry out the revolution. This
thought, already contained in the ‘‘Theses on Feuerbach”, was given
its classical formulation in The German Ideology : “... The revolution is
necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be
overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing
it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck
of ages and become fitted to found society anew” (see this vol-
ume, p. 53).

The German Ideology expounds the basic features of future
communist society — the abolition of private property, of the class
division of labour and of classes themselves, the transformation of
production and all the social relations, and the disappearance of the
state, the instrument of class domination. People’s own activity will
cease to confront them as a power alien to them. The antagonism
between town and country and between mental and physical labour
will be eliminated. Labour will be transformed from activity people
perform under compulsion into the genuine self-activity of free
people. The real liberation and all-round development of every
individual will be the highest aim of the communist organisation of
society.

This view of the future communist society is presented in The
German Ideology for the first time as an integral theory, free from all
the artificial, dogmatic construing of the future system which was
typical of the utopian Socialists despite all the brilliant conjectures
they made. The foresight of Marx and Engels was based on an

Preface

XXIII

analysis of the real tendencies of social development and was the
result of comprehension of its real laws. By expounding the specific
features of future communism, Marx and Engels were laying the
foundations of the scientific forecasting of social processes.

Not only the positive aspect of The German Ideology, the exposition
of the authors’ views, but also the critical content of this work was of
great significance in shaping the new revolutionary world outlook.
This criticism was mainly directed against the idealist conceptions of
German post-Hegelian philosophy. And by subjecting the views of
the German philosophers to a critical analysis, Marx and Engels in
fact presented a radical and scientifically based criticism of previous
philosophical thought as a whole. They demonstrated the untenabili-
ty of the idealist interpretations of history inherent in all previous
philosophy, sociology and historiography. The thinkers working in
these fields could never understand the real social processes and
their true character. At best they could grasp and more or less
correctly describe only individual aspects of these processes without
seeing the general connections determining them. The idealist
interpretation of history, The German Ideology underlined, leads to
only a superficial and illusory perception of the historical process,
and explains it in an illusory way. The socialist theories based on a
similar interpretation were likewise incapable of going beyond the
bounds of fantastic notions and utopias.

A large part of The German Ideology is occupied by criticism of the
Young Hegelians Bruno Bauer and Max Stirner. The need for
such criticism arose, as Engels pointed out, from the fact that
Bauer and Stirner were “the representatives of the ultimate
consequences of abstract German philosophy, and therefore the only
important philosophical opponents of Socialism — or rather Com-
munism ...” (see present edition, Vol. 4, p. 241).

The German Ideology completes the criticism, begun in The Holy
Family, of the subjective-idealist views of Bruno Bauer, with their
mystification of the historical process and contraposition of the
outstanding individuals, who were supposed to be the sole makers of
history, to the “passive and inert” masses. By citations from the latest
writings of Bruno Bauer and other Young Hegelians, Marx and
Engels drove home their characterisation, given in The Holy Family,
of Young Hegelian ideas as unscientific and anti-revolutionary. In
this respect there is partial textual coincidence between the
corresponding chapter in The German Ideology and the article “A
Reply to Bruno Bauer’s Anti-Critique” written by Marx and Engels
in refutation of the Young Hegelian leader’s attempt to dispute their
criticism of his views in The Holy Family.

XXIV

Preface

Most of the first volume of The German Ideology is taken up by a
critical examination of the philosophical and sociological views of
Max Stirner, formulated in his book Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum
( The Unique and His Property). Stirner was a typical exponent of
individualism and one of the first ideologists of anarchism. His views,
reflecting a petty-bourgeois protest against the bourgeois system,
enjoyed a considerable success among petty-bourgeois intellectuals
and to some extent influenced the immature outlook of craftsmen
who were becoming proletarians, while his failure to understand the
role of the proletariat, whom he identified with paupers, and also his
attacks on communism, made a resolute exposure of his views
indispensable.

Marx and Engels demonstrated the artificial and far-fetched
character of Stirner’s philosophical and sociological constructions
and the fallacy of his theory that the way to the liberation of the
individual lay through the destruction of the state and the implemen-
tation of every individual’s egoistic right to self-assertion. They
pointed out that Stirner’s voluntaristic appeals to the rights of the
individual did not in any way affect the existing social relations and
their economic basis, and so, in effect, continued to sanction the
preservation of the bourgeois social conditions which are the main
source of inequality and oppression of the individual. Stirner’s
seemingly revolutionary phrases were in fact a disguise for an
apologia of the bourgeois system.

The exposure of Stirner’s anarchist views in The German Ideology
was essentially a criticism of all such individualistic theories which
substitute fruitless rebellion by isolated individuals for participation
in the real revolutionary movement and preach total negation and
destruction instead of the positive communist aims of struggle. Marx
and Engels pointed out that the path outlined by Stirner and his like
could by no means lead to the liberation of the individual. Only a
communist revolution, carried out by the working class in the
interests of all the working people, can break the fetters with which
the individual is shackled by the existing capitalist system, and can
lead to the genuine freedom and free development of the individual,
to harmonious unity of public and personal interests.

The second volume of The German Ideology and Engels’ manuscript
“The True Socialists”, which is its direct continuation, further
show that, in substance, German “true socialism” was only a philistine
variety of earlier petty-bourgeois social utopianism and that, under
the pretence of “universal love for man”, the “true socialists” were
spreading ideas of class peace, renouncing the struggle for
democratic freedoms and revolutionary change. This was particular-

Preface

XXV

ly dangerous at the time in Germany, where the struggle of all the
democratic forces against absolutism and feudal relations was
growing sharper while at the same time the contradictions between
the proletariat and the bourgeoisie were becoming more and more
acute. Marx and Engels likewise subjected to devastating criticism
the German nationalism of the “true socialists” and their arrogant
attitude to other nations. They criticised in detail the philosophical
views of the “true socialists”, their aesthetic views, and the tendency
of some of them to give socialism a religious tinge and to impart to
it the character of a religious prophecy.

Both by its positive ideas and by its criticism of ideological trends
hostile to the proletarian world outlook, including those couched in
pseudo-revolutionary and socialist phrases, The German Ideology
represented an important landmark in the development of Marxism.
This work signified a decisive stage in the philosophical and
sociological grounding of the theory of scientific communism, in the
scientific demonstration of the world-historic role of the working
class as the social force whose historical mission is to overthrow the
exploiting capitalist system and create the new communist society.

* * *

The works contained in this volume have been translated from the
original German text. The German Ideology, which forms the greater
part of this volume, was never published in the authors’ lifetimes,
except for one chapter, nor arranged by them for publication, and
has come down to us incomplete. The text of The German Ideology has
been re-checked and re-arranged in accordance with the researches
of the Institute of Marxism-Leninism of the Central Committee of
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, with a view to presenting
it in a form corresponding as closely as possible to the layout and
content of the manuscript. In particular, Chapter I, “Feuerbach”,
which was not finished by the authors and has reached us only in the
form of several separate manuscripts, is presented in accordance
with the new arrangement and subdivision of the text prepared by
Georgi Bagaturia and edited by Vladimir Brushlinsky (first pub-
lished in English in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Works ,
Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1969, Vol. 1, and also separately under
the title Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Feuerbach: Opposition of the
Materialist and Idealist Outlooks, Lawrence & Wishart, London 1973).

The whole work on this volume has been finalised by Lev
Churbanov. He also prepared the Preface, the Notes and the Subject

XXVI

Preface

Index, which have been edited by Lev Golman (both of the Institute
of Marxism-Leninism).

The Name Index, the Index of Quoted and Mentioned Literature
and the Index of Periodicals were prepared by Nina Loiko, of the
Institute of Marxism-Leninism.

The English translation of the bulk of The German Ideology, i.e.,
“The Leipzig Council”, and also Engels’ essay “The True Socialists”,
was made by Clemens Dutt. The translation of Chapter I,
“Feuerbach”, Volume I, was made by W. Lough, and that of
Volume II by C. P. Magill, these two sections having been edited by
Roy Pascal for the English edition published by Lawrence 8c Wishart,
London, in 1938.

The English translations were edited for this volume by Maurice
Cornforth, E. J. Hobsbawm and Margaret Mynatt for Lawrence &
Wishart, and Salo Ryazanskaya, for Progress Publishers, and finally
passed for the press by the editors Lydia Belyakova, Nadezhda
Rudenko and Victor Schnittke, Progress Publishers.

The scientific editing was done by Georgi Bagaturia and Norair
Ter- Akopyan (Institute of Marxism-Leninism).

KARL MARX
and

FREDERICK ENGELS

WORKS

April 1845-April 1847

Karl Marx

[THESES ON FEUERBACH 3 ]

1) ad FEUERBACH 1

The chief defect of all previous materialism (that of Feuerbach
included) is that things [Gegenstand], reality, sensuousness
are conceived only in the form of the object, or of contemplation, but
not as sensuous human activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence, in
contradistinction to materialism, the active side was set forth
abstractly by idealism — which, of course, does not know real,
sensuous activity as such. Feuerbach wants sensuous objects, really
distinct from conceptual objects, but he does not conceive human
activity itself as objective activity. In Das Wesen des Christenthums, he
therefore regards the theoretical attitude as the only genuinely
human attitude, while practice is conceived and defined only in its
dirty-Jewish form of appearance . 2 Hence he does not grasp the
significance of “revolutionary”, of “practical-critical”, activity.

The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human
thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man
must prove the truth, i.e., the reality and power, the this-worldliness
of his thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality
of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic
question.

Original version. — Ed.

Karl Marx

The materialist doctrine concerning the changing of cir-
cumstances and upbringing forgets that circumstances are changed
by men and that the educator must himself be educated. This
doctrine must, therefore, divide society into two parts, one of which
is superior to society.

The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human
activity or self-change can be conceived and rationally understood
only as revolutionary practice.

Feuerbach starts out from the fact of religious self-estrangement,
of the duplication of the world into a religious world and a secular
one. His work consists in resolving the religious world into its secular
basis. But that the secular basis lifts off from itself and establishes
itself as an independent realm in the clouds can only be explained by
the inner strife and intrinsic contradictoriness of this secular basis.
The latter must, therefore, itself be both understood in its contradi-
ction and revolutionised in practice. Thus, for instance, once the
earthly family is discovered to be the secret of the holy family, the
former must then itself be destroyed in theory and in practice.

Feuerbach, not satisfied with abstract thinking, wants [sensuous]
contemplation; but he does not conceive sensuousness as practical,
human-sensuous activity.

Feuerbach resolves the essence of religion into the essence of man.
But the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single
individual. In its reality it is the ensemble of the social relations.

Feuerbach, who does not enter upon a criticism of this real
essence, is hence obliged:

1. To abstract from the historical process and to define the
religious sentiment [Gemiit] by itself, and to presuppose an
abstract — isolated — human individual.

2. Essence, therefore, can be regarded only as “species”, as an
inner, mute, general character which unites the many individuals in
a natural way.

Theses on Feuerbach

Feuerbach, consequently, does not see that the “religious senti-
ment” is itself a social product, and that the abstract individual which
he analyses belongs to a particular form of society.

All social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which lead theory
to mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in the
comprehension of this practice.

The highest point reached by contemplative materialism, that is,
materialism which does not comprehend sensuousness as practical
activity, is the contemplation of single individuals and of civil society.

The standpoint of the old materialism is civil society; the
standpoint of the new is human society, or social humanity.

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways;
the point is to change it.

Written in the spring of 1845

This version was first published in
1 924 — in German and in Russian — by
the Institute of Marxism-Leninism
of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U
in Marx-Engels Archives, Book I, Moscow

Printed according to the manu-
script

Karl Marx

[THESES ON FEUERBACH 3 ]

MARX ON FEUERBACH
( Written in Brussels in the spring of 1845)

The chief defect of all previous materialism — that of Feuerbach
included — is that things [ Gegenstand ], reality, sensuousness are
conceived only in the form of the object , or of contemplation, but not as
human seTisuous activity, practice, not subjectively. Hence it happened
that the active side t in contradistinction to materialism, was set forth by
idealism — but only abstractly, since, of course, idealism does not know
real, sensuous activity as such. Feuerbach wants sensuous objects,
really distinct from conceptual objects, but he does not conceive
human activity itself as objective activity. In Das Wesen des Christen-
thums, he therefore regards the theoretical attitude as the only ge-
nuinely human attitude, while practice is conceived and defined only
in its dirty-Jewish form of appearance. Hence he does not grasp the
significance of “revolutionary”, of practical-critical, activity.

The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human
thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man
must prove the truth, i.e., the reality and power, the this-worldliness
of his thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality
of thinking which isolates itself from practice is a purely scholastic
question.

Edited by Engels. — Ed.

Theses on Feuerbach

The materialist doctrine that men are products of circumstances
and upbringing, and that, therefore, changed men are products of
other circumstances and changed upbringing, forgets that it is men
who change circumstances and that the educator must himself be
educated. Hence, this doctrine is bound to divide society into two
parts, one of which is superior to society (in Robert Owen, for
example).

The coincidence of the changing of circumstances and of human
activity can be conceived and rationally understood only as
revolutionising practice.

Feuerbach starts out from the fact of religious self-estrangement,
of the duplication of the world into a religious, imaginary world and
a real one. His work consists in resolving the religious world into its
secular basis. He overlooks the fact that after completing this work,
the chief thing still remains to be done. For the fact that the secular
basis lifts off from itself and establishes itself in the clouds as an
independent realm can only be explained by the inner strife and
intrinsic contradictoriness of this secular basis. The latter must itself,
therefore, first be understood in its contradiction and then, by the
removal of the contradiction, revolutionised in practice. Thus, for
instance, once the earthly family is discovered to be the secret of the
holy family, the former must then itself be criticised in theory and
transformed in practice.

Feuerbach, not satisfied with abstract thinking , appeals to sensuous
contemplation; but he does not conceive sensuousness as practical,
human-sensuous activity.

Feuerbach, who does not enter upon a criticism of this real
essence, is hence obliged:

Karl Marx

1. To abstract from the historical process and to define the
religious sentiment [ Gemiit ] regarded by itself, and to presuppose an
abstract — isolated — human individual.

2. The essence of man, therefore, can with him be regarded only
as “species”, as an inner, mute, general character which unites the
many individuals only in a natural way.

Feuerbach, consequently, does not see that the “religious senti-
ment” is itself a social product , and that the abstract individual which
he analyses belongs in reality to a particular form of society.

Social life is essentially practical. All mysteries which mislead theory
into mysticism find their rational solution in human practice and in
the comprehension of this practice.

The highest point attained by contemplative materialism, that is,
materialism which does not comprehend sensuousness as practical
activity, is the contemplation of single individuals in “civil society”.

The standpoint of the old materialism is “civil” society; the
standpoint of the new is human society, or associated humanity.

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways;
the point, however, is to change it.

Written in the spring of 1845

Printed according to the book

First published by Engels
in the Appendix to the separate
edition of his Ludwig Feuerbach
und der Ausgang der klassischen
deutschen Philosophic, Stuttgart, 1888

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fc-

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Die Philosopher! haben die Welt nur verschieden interpretirt,
es kommt drauf an sie zu verandem.

Facsimile of Thesis 1 1 on Feuerbach. From Marx’s notebook

Frederick Engels

FEUERBACH 3

a) The entire philosophy of Feuerbach amounts to 1. philosophy
of nature — passive adoration of nature and enraptured kneeling
down before its splendour and omnipotence. 2. Anthropology,
namely «) physiology, where nothing new is added to what the
materialists have already said about the unity of body and soul, but
it is said less mechanically and with rather more exuberance,
J5) psychology, which amounts to dithyrambs glorifying love, analo-
gous to the cult of nature, apart from that nothing new. 3. Morality,
the demand to live up to the concept of “man”, 3 impuissance mise en
action . b Compare §54, p. 81: “The ethical and rational attitude of
man to his stomach consists in treating it not as something bestial but
as something human.” — §61: “Man ... as a moral being” and all the
talk about morality in Das Wesen des Christenthums.

b) The fact that at the present stage of development men can
satisfy their needs only within society, that in general from the very
start, as soon as they came into existence, men needed one another
and could only develop their needs and abilities, etc., by entering
into intercourse c with other men, this fact is expressed by Feuerbach
in the following way:

3 Cf. Ludwig Feuerbach, Grundsatze der Philosophic der Zukunft, § 52. — Ed.
b Powerlessness set in motion. Charles Fourier, Theorie des quatre mouvements, et des
destinees generates, deuxieme partie. Epilogue. — Ed.
c See Note 11. — Ed.

Frederick Engels

“Isolated man by himself has not the essenceof man in himself ’; “the essence of man is
contained only in the community, in the unity of man and man, a unity, however, which
depends only on the reality of the difference between I and you. — Man by himself is
man (in the ordinary sense), man and man, the unity of I and you, is God" (i.e., man in
the supraordinary sense) (§§ 61, 62, p. 83).

Philosophy has reached a point when the trivial fact of the
necessity of intercourse between human beings — a fact without a
knowledge of which the second generation that ever existed would
never have been produced, a fact already involved in the sexual
difference — is presented by philosophy at the end of its entire
development as the greatest result. And presented, moreover, in the
mysterious form of “the unity of I and you”. This phrase would have
been quite impossible had Feuerbach not xax’ e$opjv a thought of
the sexual act, the conjugal act, the community of I and you.* And
insofar as his community becomes real it is moreover limited to the
sexual act and to arriving at an understanding about philosophical
ideas and problems, to “true dialectics” (§ 64), to dialogue, to “the
procreation of man, both spiritual and physical man” (p. 67). What
this “ procreated ’ man does afterwards, apart from again “spiritually”
and “physically” “procreating men”, is not mentioned. Feuerbach
only knows intercourse between two beings,

“the truth that no being on its own is a true, perfect, absolute being, that truth and
perfection is only the association, the unity of two beings that are essentially alike’’
(pp. 83, 84).

c) The beginning of the Philosophie der Zukunft immediately shows
the difference between us and him:

§ 1: “The task of modern times was the realisation and humanisation of God, the
transformation and dissolution of theology into anthropology.” Cf. “The negation of
theology is the essence of modern times” (Philosophie der Zukunft, p. 23).

* For, since the human being = brain + heart, and two are necessary to represent
the human being, one of them personifies the brain in their intercourse, the other the
heart — man and woman. Otherwise it would be impossible to understand whv two
persons are more human than one. b Saint-Simonist individual. 4

a Mainly. — Ed.

b Cf. Ludwig Feuerbach, Grundsatze der Philosophie der Zukunft, § 58. — Ed.

Feuerbach

d) The distinction that Feuerbach makes between Catholicism and
Protestantism in §2 — Catholicism: “theology” “is concerned with
what God is in himself”, it has a “tendency towards speculation and
contemplation”; Protestantism is merely Christology, it leaves God to
himself and speculation and contemplation to philosophy — this
distinction is nothing but a division of labour arisen from a need
appropriate to immature science. Feuerbach explains Protestantism
merely from this need within theology, whereupon an independent
history of philosophy naturally follows.

e) “Being is not a general concept which can be separated from things. It is
identical with the things that exist.... Being is posited by essence. What my
essence is, is my being. The fish is in the water, but its essence cannot be separated from
this being. Even language identifies being and essence. It is only in human life that
being is divorced from essence — but only in exceptional, unfortunate cases — only there
is it possible that a person’s essence is not in the place where he is, but it is precisely
because of this division that his spirit is not truly in the place where his body actually is.
Only where your heart is, there you are. But all things — apart from abnormal cases — like
to be in the place where they are, and like to be what they are” (p. 47).

A fine panegyric upon the existing state of things! Apart from
abnormal cases, a few exceptional cases, you like to work from your
seventh year as a door-keeper in a coal-mine, remaining alone in the
dark for fourteen hours a day, and because it is your being
therefore it is also your essence. The same applies to a piecer 3 at a
self-actor. 3 It is your “essence” to be subservient to a branch of
labour. Cf. Das Wesen des Glaubens, p. 11, “unsatisfied hunger” [...] b

f) § 48, p. 73. “ Time is the only means that makes it possible without contradiction to
combine opposite or contradictory determinations in a single being. This applies at all
events to living beings. Only thus does here— for example in man — the contradiction
make its appearance that now this determination, this resolution, dominates and
occupies me, and then a quite different and diametrically opposed determination.”

Feuerbach describes this as 1) a contradiction, 2) a combination of
contradictions, and 3) alleges that time brings this about. Indeed time

3 This word is in English in the manuscript. — Ed.

b Engels did not finish this sentence. A similar idea is expressed in Chapter I of The
German Ideology (cf. p. 58 of this volume). — Ed.

Frederick Engels

“filled” with events, but still time, and not that which takes place
during this time. 3 The proposition amounts to the statement: it is only
in time that change is possible.

Written probably in the autumn Printed according to the manu-

of 1 845 script

First published in German in 1932
in Marx/Engels, Gesamtansgabe,

Erste Abteilung, Bd. 5

Ludwig Feuerbach , Grundsatze der Philosophie der Zukunft, § 1 2. — Ed.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

[A REPLY TO BRUNO BAUER’S ANTI-CRITIQUE 5 ]

Brussels, November 20. In Wigand’s Vierteljahrsschrift, Vol. Ill,
p. 138 ff., Bruno Bauer stammers out a few words in answer to Die
heilige Familie, oder Kritik der kritischen Kritik, 1845, by Engels and
Marx . a At the outset Bruno Bauer declares that Engels and Marx have
misunderstood him; with unaffected naivete he repeats his old
pretentious phrases, which have long since been reduced to nothing,
and regrets that these writers do not know his catchwords about “the
constant struggle and victory, the destruction and creation of
criticism”, which is the “only historical force”, his assertions that
“the critic and only the critic has smashed religion in its entirety and
the state in its various manifestations”, that “the critic has worked
and still works”, and similar high-sounding protestations and lofty
effusions. In his reply Bauer immediately provides new and striking
proof of “ how the critic has worked and still works”. For the
“hard-working” critic considers that it serves his purpose better not to
make the book by Engels and Marx the object of his exclamations and
quotations, but a mediocre and confused review of this book published
in the Westphalische Dampfboot (May issue, p. 206 ff.) 6 — a conjuring
trick, which, with critical prudence, he conceals from the reader.

While Bauer is copying from the Dampfboot, he interrupts his
“ arduous work” only with laconic, but highly ambiguous shrugging of
his shoulders. Critical criticism has limited itself to shrugging its
shoulders since it has no more to say. It finds salvation in the
shoulder-blades despite its hatred of the sensuous world, which it can

See present edition, Vol. 4, pp. 3-21 1. — Ed.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

only conceive in the shape of a “stick” (see Wigand’s Vierteljahrsschrift,
p. 130), an instrument for chastising its theological bareness.

In his superficial haste the Westphalian reviewer gives a ridiculous
summary which is utterly at variance with the book he is reviewing.
The “ hard-working ” critic copies the fabrications of the reviewer,
attributes them to Engels and Marx and triumphantly shouts to the
uncritical mass — which he annihilates with one eye, while with the
other he flirtatiously invites it to come nearer — see, these are my
opponents!

Let us now place side by side the words of these documents.

The reviewer writes in the Westphalische Dampfboot :

“In order to kill the Jews he” ( Bruno Bauer) “transforms them into theologians, and
the problem of political emancipation into that of human emancipation; to annihilate
Hegel he transforms him into Herr Hinrichs; to get rid of the French Revolution,
communism and Feuerbach he shouts ‘mass, mass, mass!’ and again ‘mass, mass,
mass!’ and crucifies it to the glory of the spirit, which is criticism, the true incarnation
of the absolute idea in Bruno of Charlottenburg” (Das Westphalische Dampfboot, 1. c.,

p. 212).

The “ hard-working ” critic writes:

“The critic of critical criticism” becomes “in the end childish”, “plays the
Harlequin on the theatro mundi” and “would have us believe”, “asserting in all
seriousness, that Bruno Bauer in order to kill the Jews”, etc., etc. — there follows verba-
tim the whole passage from the Westphalische Dampfboot, which is nowhere to be found
in Die heilige Familie ( Wigand’s Vierteljahrsschrift, p. 142).

Compare this with the attitude of critical criticism to the Jewish
question and to political emancipation in Die heilige Familie, inter alia,
pp. 163-85; regarding its attitude to the French Revolution cf. pp.
185-95; and its attitude to socialism and communism, pp. 22-74,
p. 21 1 ff., pp. 243-44 and the whole chapter on critical criticism in
the person of Rudolph, Prince of Geroldstein, pp. 258-333.® Regar-
ding the attitude of critical criticism to Hegel see the mystery of “spe-
culative construction” and the following explanation on p. 79 ff., also
pp. 121 and 122, 126-28, 136-37, 208-09, 215-27 and 304-08; on the
attitude of critical criticism to Feuerbach see pp. 138-41, and finally
on the result and the trend of the critical fight against the French Re-
volution, materialism and socialism see pp. 214-15. b

One can see from these quotations that the Westphalian reviewer
has given a completely distorted and only imaginary summary

a See present edition, Vol. 4, pp. 106-18, 118-24, 23-72, 134 ff., 151-53, 162-
209. — Ed.

b Ibid., pp. 57 ff., 82 and 83, 85-87, 91-92, 131-32, 136-43, 191-93, 92-94, 135-
36.— Ed.

A Reply to Bruno Bauer’s Anti-Critique

showing that he has absurdly misunderstood the arguments. It is this
summary which with “creative and devastating” agility the “pure”
and “ hard-working ” critic substitutes for the original.

Furthermore.

The reviewer writes in the W estphalische Dampfboot :

“To his” (that is, Bruno Bauer’s) “ silly self-apotheosis, in which he seeks to prove that
wherever he was formerly in thrall to the prejudices of the mass, this enthralment was
merely a necessary guise of criticism, Marx replies by offering to provide the following
little scholastic treatise: ‘Why the conception of the Virgin Mary had to be proved by no
other than Herr Bruno Bauer* ” etc., etc. ( Dampfboot , p. 213).

The “hard-working” critic:

“He” (the critic of critical criticism) “wants to make us believe, and in the end
himself believes his humbug, that wherever Bauer was formerly in thrall to the
prejudices of the mass he wants to present this enthralment merely as a necessary
guise of criticism and not on the contrary as the result of the necessary development of
criticism; in reply to this ‘silly self-apotheosis’ he therefore offers the following
little scholastic treatise: ‘Why the conception of the Virgin Mary’” etc., etc. ( Wigand’s
Vierteljahrsschrift, pp. 142-43).

The reader will find in Die heilige Familie, pp. 1 50-63, a a special
section on Bruno Bauer's self-apology, but unfortunately nothing is
written there about the little scholastic treatise, which is therefore by
no means offered in reply to Bruno Bauer's self-apology, as the
Westphalian reviewer writes; and the obliging Bruno Bauer copies
this — even enclosing some words in inverted commas — assuming it to
be a quotation from Die heilige Familie. The little treatise is
mentioned in a different section and in a different context (see Die
heilige Familie, pp. 164 and 165 b ). What it signifies there the reader
may find out for himself and again admire the “pure” cunning of
the “hard-working critic”.

In the end the “ hard-working ” critic exclaims:

“This” (namely the quotations which Bruno Bauer has borrowed from the
W estphalische Dampfboot and attributed to the authors of Die heilige Familie) “has of
course reduced Bruno Bauer to silence and brought criticism to its senses. On the
contrary, Marx has presented us with a spectacle by finally himself appearing in the role
of the amusing comedian” ( Wigand’s Vierteljahrsschrift, p. 143).

To understand this “on the contrary” one has to know that the
Westphalian reviewer, for whom Bruno Bauer works as a copyist,
dictates the following to his critical and hard-working scribe:

“The world-historic drama” (that is, the fight of Bauer’s criticism against the mass)
“quite simply disintegrates into the most amusing comedy ” (Das W estphalische Dampfboot,
p. 213).

a See present edition, Vol. 4, pp. 99-106. — Ed.

b Ibid., pp. 106-08. — Ed.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

Here the hapless copyist jumps to his feet: to transcribe his own
condemnation is beyond his power. “On the contrary he cries
interrupting the dictation of the Westphalian reviewer, “on the
contrary ... Marx ... is the most amusing comedian! ” and he wipes the
cold sweat from his brow.

By resorting to incompetent jugglery , to the most deplorable
conjuring trick, Bruno Bauer has in the final analysis confirmed the
death sentence passed upon him by Engels and Marx in Die heilige
Familie.

Printed according to the journal

Written on November 20, 1845

Published in Gesellschaftsspiegel,
Heft VII, Januar 1846

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels
THE GERMAN IDEOLOGY

CRITIQUE OF MODERN GERMAN PHILOSOPHY
ACCORDING TO ITS REPRESENTATIVES
FEUERBACH, B. BAUER AND STIRNER,

AND OF GERMAN SOCIALISM
ACCORDING TO ITS VARIOUS PROPHETS 7

Written between November 1 845 Printed according to the manu-

and August 1846 script

First published in full in 1932

by the Institute of Marxism-Leninism

of the Central Committee of the C.P.S.U.

in Marx/Engels, Gesamtausgabe,

Erste Abteilung, Bd. 5

CRITIQUE

OF MODERN GERMAN PHILOSOPHY
ACCORDING TO ITS REPRESENTATIVES
FEUERBACH, B. BAUER AND STIRNER

Preface

Hitherto men have always formed wrong ideas about themselves,
about what they are and what they ought to be. They have arranged
their relations according to their ideas of God, of normal man,
etc. The products of their brains have got out of their hands. They,
the creators, have bowed down before their creations. Let us liberate
them from the chimeras, the ideas, dogmas, imaginary beings under
the yoke of which they are pining away. Let us revolt against this rule
of concepts. Let us teach men, says one, 3 how to exchange these
imaginations for thoughts which correspond to the essence of man;
says another, 15 how to take up a critical attitude to them; says the
third, 0 how to get them out of their heads; and existing reality will
collapse.

These innocent and child-like fancies are the kernel of the modern
Young-Hegelian philosophy, which not only is received by the
German public with horror and awe, but is announced by our
philosophic heroes with the solemn consciousness of its world-shatter-
ing danger and criminal ruthlessness. The first volume of the
present publication has the aim of uncloaking these sheep, who take
themselves and are taken for wolves; of showing that their bleating
merely imitates in a philosophic form the conceptions of the German
middle class; that the boasting of these philosophic commentators
only mirrors the wretchedness of the real conditions in Germany. It
is its aim to ridicule and discredit the philosophic struggle with the

a Ludwig Feuerbach. — Ed.
b Bruno Bauer.— Ed.
c Max Stirner. — Ed.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

shadows of reality, which appeals to the dreamy and muddled
German nation.

Once upon a time a valiant fellow had the idea that men were
drowned in water only because they were possessed with the idea of
gravity.. If they were to get this notion out of their heads, say by
avowing it to be a superstitious, a religious concept, they would be
sublimely proof against any danger from water. His whole life long
he fought against the illusion of gravity, of whose harmful
consequences all statistics brought him new and manifold evidence.
This valiant fellow was the type of the new revolutionary
philosophers in Germany.*

* [The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:] There is no specific
difference between German idealism and the ideology of all the other nations. The
latter too regards the world as dominated by ideas, ideas and concepts as the
determining principles, and certain notions as the mystery of the material world
accessible to the philosophers.

Hegel completed positive idealism. He not only turned the whole material world
into a world of ideas and the whole of history into a history of ideas. He was not
content with recording thought entities, he also sought to describe the act of creation.

Roused from their world of fancy, the German philosophers protest against the world
of ideas to which they [...] the conception of the real, material [...]

All the German philosophical critics assert that the real world of men has hitherto
been dominated and determined by ideas, images, concepts, and that the real world is
a product of the world of ideas. This has been the case up to now, but it ought to be
changed. They differ from each other in the manner in which they intend to deliver
mankind, which in their opinion is groaning under the weight of its own fixed ideas;
they differ in respect of what they proclaim to be fixed ideas; they agree in their belief
in the hegemony of ideas, they agree in the belief that the action of their critical reason
must bring about the destruction of the existing order of things: whether they
consider their isolated rational activity sufficient or want to conquer universal
consciousness.

The belief that the real world is the product of the ideal world, that the world of
ideas [...]

Having lost their faith in the Hegelian world of ideas, the German philosophers
protest against the domination of thoughts, ideas, and concepts which, according to
their opinion, i.e., according to Hegel’s illusion, have hitherto produced, determined
and dominated the real world. They make their protest and expire [...]

According to the Hegelian system ideas, thoughts and concepts have produced,
determined, dominated the real life of men, their material world, their actual
relations. His rebellious disciples take this [...]

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First page of the Preface to The German Ideology
in Marx’s handwriting

FEUERBACH

OPPOSITION OF THE MATERIALIST
* AND IDEALIST OUTLOOKS 8

[I]

|sh.l| According to German ideologists, Germany has in the last
few years gone through an unparalleled revolution. The decomposi-
tion of the Hegelian system, which began with Strauss, 9 has
developed into a universal ferment into which all the “powers of the
past” are swept. In the general chaos mighty empires have arisen
only to meet with immediate doom, heroes have emerged momen-
tarily to be again hurled into obscurity by bolder and stronger rivals.
It was a revolution beside which the French Revolution was child’s
play, a world struggle beside which the struggles of the Diadochi 10
appear insignificant. Principles ousted one another, intellectual
heroes overthrew each other with unheard-of rapidity, and in the
three years 1842-45 more was cleared away in Germany than at other
times in three centuries.

All this is supposed to have taken place in the realm of pure
thought.

Certainly it is an interesting event we are dealing with: the
putrescence of the absolute spirit. When the last spark of its life had
failed, the various components of this caput mortuum a began to
decompose, entered into new combinations and formed new
substances. The industrialists of philosophy, who till then had lived
on the exploitation of the absolute spirit, now seized upon the new
combinations. Each with all possible zeal set about retailing his
apportioned share. This was bound to give rise to competition,
which, to start with, was carried on in moderately civil and staid

a Literally: dead head; a term used in chemistry for the residuum left after
distillation; here: remainder, residue. — Ed.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

fashion. Later, when the German market was glutted, and the
commodity in spite of all efforts was not favourably received in
the world market, the business was spoiled in the usual German
manner by cheap and spurious production, deterioration in
quality, adulteration of the raw materials, falsification of labels,
fictitious purchases, bill-jobbing and a credit system devoid of
any real basis. The competition turned into a bitter struggle, which
is now being extolled and interpreted to us as an upheaval of
world significance, the begetter of the most prodigious results
and achievements.

If we wish to rate at its true value this philosophic charlatanry,
which awakens even in the breast of the righteoifs German citizen a
glow of patriotic feeling, if we wish to bring out clearly the pettiness,
the parochial narrowness of this whole Young-Hegelian movement
and in particular the tragicomic contrast between the illusions of
these heroes about their achievements and the actual achievements
themselves, we must look at the whole spectacle from a standpoint
beyond the frontiers of Germany.*

[1.] IDEOLOGY IN GENERAL, GERMAN IDEOLOGY
IN PARTICULAR

|sh.2| German criticism has, right up to its latest efforts, never left
the realm of philosophy. It by no means examines its general
philosophic premises, but in fact all its problems originate in a
definite philosophical system, that of Hegel. Not only in its answers,
even in its questions there was a mystification. This dependence on
Hegel is the reason why not one of these modern critics has even

* [In the first version of the clean copy there follows a passage, which is crossed
out:] |p. 2 1

We preface therefore the specific criticism of individual representatives of
this movement with a few general observations, elucidating the ideological premises
common to all of them. These remarks will suffice to indicate the standpoint of our
criticism insofar as it is required for the understanding and the motivation of the
subsequent individual criticisms. We oppose these remarks |p. 3| to Feuerbach in
particular because he is the only one who has at least made some progress and whose
works can be examined de bonne foi.

1. Ideology in General, and Especially German Philosophy
A. We know only a single science, the science of history. One can look at history
from two sides and divide it into the history of nature and the history of men. The two
sides are, however, inseparable; the history of nature and the history of men are
dependent on each other so long as men exist. The history of nature, called natural

The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach

attempted a comprehensive criticism of the Hegelian system,
however much each professes to have advanced beyond Hegel.
Their polemics against Hegel and against one another are
confined to this — each takes one aspect of the Hegelian system and
turns this against the whole system as well as against the aspects
chosen by the others. To begin with they took pure, unfal-
sified Hegelian categories such as “substance” and “self-con-
sciousness”, a later they secularised these categories by giving
them more profane names such as “species”, “the unique”,
“man”, b etc.

The entire body of German philosophical criticism from Strauss to
Stirner is confined to criticism of religious conceptions.* The critics
started from real religion and theology proper. What religious
consciousness and religious conception are was subsequently defined
in various ways. The advance consisted in including the allegedly
dominant metaphysical, political, juridical, moral and other concep-
tions under the category of religious or theological conceptions; and
similarly in declaring that political, juridical, moral consciousness
was religious or theological consciousness, and that the political,
juridical, moral man — “Man” in the last resort — was religious. The
dominance of religion was presupposed. Gradually every dominant
relationship was declared to be a religious relationship and
transformed into a cult, a cult of law, a cult of the state, etc. It was
throughout merely a question of dogmas and belief in dogmas. The
world was sanctified to an ever-increasing extent till at last the
venerable Saint Max c was able to canonise it en bloc and thus dispose
of it once for all.

The Old Hegelians had understood everything as soon as it was

science, does not concern us here; but we will have to examine the history of men,
since almost the whole ideology amounts either to a distorted conception of this
history or to a complete abstraction from it. Ideology is itself only one of the aspects of
this history.

[There follows a passage dealing with the premises of the materialist conception of
history. It is not crossed out and in this volume it is reproduced as Section 2; see
pp. 31-32.]

* [The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:] claiming to be the
absolute redeemer of the world from all evil. Religion was continually regarded and
treated as the arch-enemy, as the ultimate cause of all relations repugnant to these
philosophers.

a The basic categories of David Friedrich Strauss and Bruno Bauer. — Ed.
b The basic categories of Ludwig Feuerbach and Max Stirner. — Ed.
c Max Stirner. — Ed.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

reduced to a Hegelian logical category. The Young Hegelians
criticised everything by ascribing religious conceptions to it or by
declaring that it is a theological matter. The Young Hegelians are in
agreement with the Old Hegelians in their belief in the rule of
religion, of concepts, of a universal principle in the existing world.
Except that the one party attacks this rule as usurpation, while the
other extols it as legitimate.

Since the Young Hegelians consider conceptions, thoughts, ideas,
in fact all the products of consciousness, to which they attribute an
independent existence, as the real chains of men (just as the Old
Hegelians declare them the true bonds of human society), it is
evident that the Young Hegelians have to fight only against these
illusions of consciousness. Since, according to their fantasy,
the relations of men, all their doings, their fetters and their
limitations are products of their consciousness, the Young Hegelians
logically put to men the moral postulate of exchanging their present
consciousness for human, critical or egoistic consciousness, 3 and thus
of removing their limitations. This demand to change consciousness
amounts to a demand to interpret the existing world in a different
way, i.e., to recognise it by means of a different interpretation. The
Young-Hegelian ideologists, in spite of their allegedly “world-
shattering” b phrases, are the staunchest conservatives. The most
recent of them have found the correct expression for their activity
when they declare they are only fighting against “phrases”. They
forget, however, that they themselves are opposing nothing but
phrases to these phrases, and that they are in no way combating the
real existing world when they are combating solely the phrases of
this world. The only results which this philosophic criticism was
able to achieve were a few (and at that one-sided) elucidations of
Christianity from the point of view of religious history; all the rest
of their assertions are only further embellishments of their claim
to have furnished, in these unimportant elucidations, discoveries
of world-historic importance.

It has not occurred to any one of these philosophers to inquire into
the connection of German philosophy with German reality, the
connection of their criticism with their own material surroundings. c

3 A reference to Ludwig Feuerbach, Bruno Bauer and Max Stirner, whose basic
categories were, respectively, “man”, “criticism” and “ego”. — Ed.

b Cf. “Ueber das Recht des Freigesprochenen ...” published anonymously in
Wigand’s Vierteljahrsschrift, 1845, Bd. IV. — Ed.

c The rest of this page of the manuscript is left blank. The text following on the
next page of the manuscript is reproduced in this volume as Section 3; see pp. 32-
35 .—Ed.

The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach

[2. PREMISES OF THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY 3 ]

|p. 3 1 The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones,
not dogmas, but real premises from which abstraction can only be
made in the imagination. They are the real individuals, their activity
and the material conditions of their life, both those which they find
already existing and those produced by their activity. These premises
can thus be |p. 4| verified in a purely empirical way.

The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence
of living human individuals.* Thus the first fact to be established is
the physical organisation of these individuals and their consequent
relation to the rest of nature. Of course, we cannot here go either
into the actual physical nature of man, or into the natural conditions
in which man finds himself — geological, oro-hydrographical,
climatic and so on.** All historical writing must set out from these
natural bases and their modification in the course of history through
the action of men.

Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by
religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to
distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce
their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their
physical organisation. By producing their means of subsistence men
are indirectly producing their material life.

The way in which men produce their means of subsistence
depends first of all on the nature of the means of subsistence they
actually find in existence and have to reproduce.

|p. 5 1 This mode of production must not be considered simply as
being the reproduction of the physical existence of the individuals.
Rather it is a definite form of activity of these individuals, a definite
form of expressing their life, a definite mode of life on their part. As
individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore,
coincides with their production, both with what they produce and

* [The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:] The first historical act
of these individuals distinguishing them from animals is not that they think, but that
they begin to produce their means of subsistence.

** [The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:] These conditions
determine not only the original, spontaneous organisation of men, especially racial
differences, but also the entire further development, or lack of development, of men
up to the present time.

3 The text of the following section has been taken from the first version
of the clean copy. — Ed.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

with how they produce. Hence what individuals are depends on the
material conditions of their production.

This production only makes its appearance with the increase of
population. In its turn this presupposes the intercourse [Verkehr] 11 of
individuals with one another. The form of this intercourse is again
determined by production.

[3. PRODUCTION AND INTERCOURSE.

DIVISION OF LABOUR

AND FORMS OF PROPERTY— TRIBAL, ANCIENT, FEUDAL]

[sh.3| The relations of different nations among themselves depend
upon the extent to which each has developed its productive forces,
the division of labour and internal intercourse. This proposition is
generally recognised. But not only the relation of one nation to
others, but also the whole internal structure of the nation itself
depends on the stage of development reached by its production and
its internal and external intercourse. How far the productive forces
of a nation are developed is shown most manifestly by the degree to
which the division of labour has been carried. Each new productive
force, insofar as it is not merely a quantitative extension of
productive forces already known (for instance, the bringing into
cultivation of fresh land), causes a further development of the
division of labour.

The division of labour inside a nation leads at first to the separation
of industrial and commercial from agricultural labour, and hence to
the separation of town and country and to the conflict of their
interests. Its further development leads to the separation of
commercial from industrial labour. At the same time through the
division of labour inside these various branches there develop
various divisions among the individuals co-operating in definite
kinds of labour. The relative position of these individual groups is
determined by the way work is organised in agriculture, industry
and commerce (patriarchalism, slavery, estates, classes). These same
conditions are to be seen (given a more developed intercourse) in the
relations of different nations to one another.

The various stages of development in the division of labour are
just so many different forms of property, i.e., the existing stage in
the division of labour determines also the relations of individuals to
one another with reference to the material, instrument and product
of labour.

The first form of property is tribal property [ Stammeigentum ]. 12

The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach

It corresponds to the undeveloped stage of production, at which a
people lives by hunting and fishing, by cattle-raising or, at most, by
agriculture. In the latter case it presupposes a great mass of
uncultivated stretches of land. The division of labour is at this
stage still very elementary and is confined to a further extension
of the natural division of labour existing in the family. The
social structure is, therefore, limited to an extension of the
family: patriarchal chieftains, below them the members of the
tribe, finally slaves. The slavery latent in the family only develops
gradually with the increase of population, the growth of wants,
and with the extension of external intercourse, both of war and
of barter.

The second form is the ancient communal and state property,
which proceeds especially from the union of several tribes into a city
by agreement or by conquest, and which is still accompanied by
slavery. Beside communal property we already find movable, and
later also immovable, private property developing, but as an
abnormal form subordinate to communal property. The citizens
hold power over their labouring slaves only in their community, and
even on this account alone they are bound to the form of communal
property. It constitutes the communal private property of the active
citizens who, in relation to their slaves, are compelled to remain in
this spontaneously derived form of association. For this reason the
whole structure of society based on this communal property, and
with it the power of the people, decays in the same measure in which
immovable private property evolves. The division of labour is already-
more developed. We already find the opposition of town and country;
later the opposition between those states which represent town
interests and those which represent country interests, and inside the
towns themselves the opposition between industry and maritime
commerce. The class relations between citizens and slaves are now
completely developed.

With the development of private property, we find here for the first
time the same relations which we shall find again, only on a more
extensive scale, with modern private property. On the one hand, the
concentration of private property, which began very early in Rome (as
the Licinian agrarian law proves) and proceeded very rapidly from
the time of the civil wars and especially under the emperors 13 ; on the
other hand, coupled with this, the transformation of the plebeian
small peasantry into a proletariat, which, however, owing to its
intermediate position between propertied citizens and slaves, never
achieved an independent development.

The third form is feudal or estate property. If antiquity started out

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

from the town and its small territory, the Middle Ages started out
from the country. This different starting-point was determined by the
sparseness of the population at that time, which was scattered over a
large area and which received no large increases from the
conquerors. In contrast to Greece and Rome, feudal development,
therefore, begins over a much wider territory, prepared by the
Roman conquests and the spread of agriculture at first associated
with them. The last centuries of the declining Roman Empire and its
conquest by the barbarians destroyed a considerable part of the
productive forces; agriculture had declined, industry had decayed
for want of a market, trade had died out or been violently
interrupted, the rural and urban population had decreased. These
conditions and the mode of organisation of the conquest determined
by them, together with the influence of the Germanic military
constitution, led to the development of feudal property. Like tribal
and communal property, it is also based on a community; but the
directly producing class standing over against it is not, as in the case
of the ancient community, the slaves, but the enserfed small
peasantry. As soon as feudalism is fully developed, there also arises
antagonism to the towns. The hierarchical structure of landowner-
ship, and the armed bodies of retainers associated with it, gave the
nobility power over the serfs. This feudal organisation was, just
as much as the ancient communal property, an association against a
subjected producing class; but the form of association and the
relation to the direct producers were different because of the
different conditions of production.

This feudal structure of landownership had its counterpart in the
towns in the shape of corporative property, the feudal organisation of
trades. Here property consisted |sh.4| chiefly in the labour of each
individual. The necessity for associating against the association of the
robber-nobility, the need for communal covered markets in an age
when the industrialist was at the same time a merchant, the growing
competition of the escaped serfs swarming into the rising towns, the
feudal structure of the whole country: these combined to bring about
the guilds. The gradually accumulated small capital of individual
craftsmen and their stable numbers, as against the growing
population, evolved the relation of journeyman and apprentice,
which brought into being in the towns a hierarchy similar to that in
the country.

Thus property during the feudal epoch primarily consisted on the
one hand of landed property with serf labour chained to it, and on
the other of the personal labour of the individual who with his small
capital commands the labour of journeymen. The organisation of

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

materially, and hence as they work under definite material limits,
presuppositions and conditions independent of their will.*

The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at
first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material
intercourse of men — the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking,
the mental intercourse of men at this stage still appear as the direct
efflux of their material behaviour. The same applies to mental
production as expressed in the language of the politics, laws,
morality, religion, metaphysics, etc., of a people. Men are the
producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc., that is, real, active men, as
they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive
forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its
furthest forms.** Consciousness [das Bewusstsein ] can never be
anything else than conscious being [ das bewusste Seiri\, and the being
of men is their actual life-process. If in all ideology men and their
relations appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenome-
non arises just as much from their historical life-process as the
inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical
life-process.

In direct contrast to German philosophy which descends from
heaven to earth, here it is a matter of ascending from earth to
heaven. That is to say, not of setting out from what men say, imagine,
conceive, nor from men as narrated, thought of, imagined,
conceived, in order to arrive at men in the flesh; but setting out from
real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process
demonstrating the development of the ideological reflexes and
echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the brains of
men are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process,
which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises.
Morality, religion, metaphysics, and all the rest of ideology as well as
the forms of consciousness corresponding to these, thus no longer

* [The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:] The ideas which these
individuals form are ideas either about their relation to nature or about their mutual
relations or about their own nature. It is evident that in all these cases their ideas are
the conscious expression — real or illusory — of their real relations and activities, of
their production, of their intercourse, of their social and political conduct. The
opposite assumption is only possible if in addition to the spirit of the real, materially
evolved individuals a separate spirit is presupposed. If the conscious expression of the
real relations of these individuals is illusory, if in their imagination they turn reality
upside-down, then this in its turn is the result of their limited material mode of activity
and their limited social relations arising from it.

** [The manuscript originally had:] Men are the producers of their conceptions,
ideas, etc., and precisely men conditioned by the mode of production of their material
life, by their material intercourse and its further development in the social and political
structure.

The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach

retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no
development; but men, developing their material production and
their material intercourse, alter, along with this their actual world,
also their thinking and the products of their thinking. It is not
consciousness that determines life, but life that determines con-
sciousness. For the first manner of approach the starting-point is
consciousness taken as the living individual; for the second manner
of approach, which conforms to real life, it is the real living
individuals themselves, and consciousness is considered solely as their
consciousness.

This manner of approach is not devoid of premises. It starts out
from the real premises and does not abandon them for a moment. Its
premises are men, not in any fantastic isolation and fixity, but in
their actual, empirically perceptible process of development under
definite conditions. As soon as this active life-process is described,
history ceases to be a collection of dead facts, as it is with the
empiricists (themselves still abstract), or an imagined activity of
imagined subjects, as with the idealists.

Where speculation ends, where real life starts, there consequently
begins real, positive science, the expounding of the practical activity,
of the practical process of development of men. Empty phrases
about consciousness end, and real knowledge has to take their place.
When the reality is described, a self-sufficient philosophy [die
selbstandige Philosophie ] loses its medium of existence. At the best its
place can only be taken by a summing-up of the most general results,
abstractions which are derived from the observation of the historical
development of men. These abstractions in themselves, divorced
from real history, have no value whatsoever. They can only serve to
facilitate the arrangement of historical material, to indicate the
sequence of its separate strata. But they by no means afford a recipe or
schema, as does philosophy, for neatly trimming the epochs of history.
On the contrary, the difficulties begin only when one sets about the
examination and arrangement of the material — whether of a past
epoch or of the present — and its actual presentation. The removal of
these difficulties is governed by premises which certainly cannot be
stated here, but which only the study of the actual life-process and
the activity of the individuals of each epoch will make evident. We
shall select here some of these abstractions, which we use in
contradistinction to ideology, and shall illustrate them by historical
examples. 3

a The clean copy ends here. The text that follows in this edition are the three parts
of the rough copy of the manuscript. — Ed.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

[II]

[1. PRECONDITIONS OF THE REAL LIBERATION OF MAN]

1 1 j We shall, of course, not take the trouble to explain to our wise
philosophers that the “liberation” of “man” is not advanced a single
step by reducing philosophy, theology, substance and all the rubbish
to “self-consciousness” and by liberating “man” from the domina-
tion of these phrases, which have never held him in thrall.* Nor shall
we explain to them that it is possible to achieve real liberation only in
the real world and by real means, that slavery cannot be abolished
without the steam-engine and the mule jenny, serfdom cannot be
abolished without improved agriculture, and that, in general, people
cannot be liberated as long as they are unable to obtain food and
drink, housing and clothing in adequate quality and quantity.
“Liberation” is a historical and not a mental act, and it is brought
about by historical conditions, the [level j of industry, com[merce],
[agriculture, [intercourse...] 3 |2| then subsequently, in accordance
with the different stages of their development, [they make up] the
nonsense of substance, subject, self-consciousness and pure criticism,
as well as religious and theological nonsense, and later they get ricf of
it again when their development is sufficiently advanced.** In
Germany, a country where only a trivial historical development is
taking place, these mental developments, these glorified and
ineffective trivialities, naturally serve as a substitute for the lack of
historical development, and they take root and have to be combated.
But this fight is of local importance.***

[2. FEUERBACH’S CONTEMPLATIVE AND INCONSISTENT MATERIALISM]

[...] b 1 8 1 in reality and for the practical materialist, i.e., the
communist, it is a question of revolutionising the existing world, of
practically coming to grips with and changing the things found in

* [Marginal notes by Marx:] Philosophic liberation and real liberation. — Man.
The unique. The individual. — Geological, hydrographical, etc., conditions. The human
body. Needs and labour.

** [Marginal note by Marx:] Phrases and real movement. The importance of
phrases in Germany.

*** [Marginal note by Marx:] Language is the language of re[ality].

a The manuscript is damaged here: the lower part of the sheet is torn off; one line
of the text is missing. — Ed.

Five pages of the manuscript are missing. — Ed.

The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach

existence. When occasionally we find such views with Feuerbach,
they are never more than isolated surmises and have much too little
influence on his general outlook to be considered here as anything
but embryos capable of development. Feuerbach’s “conception” of
the sensuous world is confined on the one hand to mere
contemplation of it, and on the other to mere feeling; he posits
“Man” instead of “real historical man”. 14 “Man” is really “the
German”. In the first case, the contemplation of the sensuous world,
he necessarily lights on things which contradict his consciousness and
feeling, which disturb the harmony he presupposes, the harmony of
all parts of the sensuous world and especially of man and nature.*
To remove this disturbance, he must take refuge in a double
perception, a profane one which perceives “only the flatly obvious”
and a higher, philosophical, one which perceives the “true essence”
of things. He does not see that the sensuous world around him is not
a thing given direct from all eternity, remaining ever the same, but
the product of industry and of the state of society; and, indeed [a
product] in the sense that it is an historical product, the result of the
activity of a whole succession of generations, each standing on the
shoulders of the preceding one, developing its industry and its
intercourse, and modifying its social system according to the
changed needs. Even the objects of the simplest “sensuous certainty”
are only given him through social development, industry and
commercial intercourse. The cherry-tree, like almost all fruit-trees,
was, as is well known, only a few centuries ago transplanted by
commerce into our zone, and therefore only |9J by this action of a
definite society in a definite age has it become “sensuous certainty”
for Feuerbach.

Incidentally, when things are seen in this way, as they really are
and happened, every profound philosophical problem is resolved, as
will be seen even more clearly later, quite simply into an empirical
fact. For instance, the important question of the relation of man to
nature (Bruno goes so far as to speak of “the antitheses in nature and
history” (p. 110), a as though these were two separate “things” and
man did not always have before him an historical nature and a

* NB. F[euerbach’s] error is not that he subordinates the flatly obvious, the
sensuous appearance to the sensuous reality established by detailed investigation of the
sensuous facts, but that he cannot in the last resort cope with the sensuous world
except by looking at it with the “eyes”, i.e., through the “spectacles”, of the
philosopher.

Bruno Bauer, “Charakteristik Ludwig Feuerbachs”. — Ed.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

natural history), which gave rise to all the “unfathomably lofty
works” 3 on “substance” and “self-consciousness”, crumbles of itself
when we understand that the celebrated “unity of man with nature”
has always existed in industry and has existed in varying forms in
every epoch according to the lesser or greater development of
industry, and so has the “struggle” of man with nature, right up to
the development of his productive forces on a corresponding basis.
Industry and commerce, production and the exchange of the
necessities of life in their turn determine distribution, the structure
of the different social classes and are, in turn, determined by it as to
the mode in which they are carried on; and so it happens that in
Manchester, for instance, Feuerbach sees only factories and
machines, where a hundred years ago only spinning-wheels and
weaving-looms were to be seen, or in the Campagna di Roma he
finds only pasture lands and swamps, where in the time of Augustus
he would have found nothing but the vineyards and villas of Roman
capitalists. Feuerbach speaks in particular of the perception of
natural science; he mentions secrets which are disclosed only to the
eye of the physicist and chemist; but where would natural science be
without industry and commerce? Even this “pure” natural science is
provided with an aim, as with its material, only through trade and
industry, through the sensuous activity of men. So much is this
activity, this unceasing sensuous labour and creation, this produc-
tion, the foundation of the whole sensuous world as it now exists
that, were it interrupted only for a year, Feuerbach would not only
find an enormous change in the natural world, but would very soon
find that the whole world of men and his own perceptive faculty, nay
his own existence, were missing. Of course, in all this the priority of
external nature remains unassailed, and all this has no 1 1 0 j
application to the original men produced by generatio aequivocd 3 ; but
this differentiation has meaning only insofar as man is considered
to be distinct from nature. For that matter, nature, the nature
that preceded human history, is not by any means the nature
in which Feuerbach lives, it is nature which today no longer exists
anywhere (except perhaps on a few Australian coral islands of
recent origin) and which, therefore, does not exist for Feuerbach
either.

1 9 1 Certainly Feuerbach has |10| a great advantage over the
“pure” materialists since he realises that man too is an “object of the

3 Paraphrase of a line from Goethe’s Faust, “Prolog im Himmel”. — Ed.
b Spontaneous generation. — Ed.

The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach

senses”. But apart from the fact that he only conceives him as an
“object of the senses”, not as “sensuous activity”, because he still
remains in the realm of theory and conceives of men not in their
given social connection, not under their existing conditions of life,
which have made them what they are, he never arrives at the actually
existing, active men, but stops at the abstraction “man”, and gets no
further than recognising “the actual, individual, corporeal man”
emotionally, i.e., he knows no other “human relations” “of man to
man” than love and friendship, and even then idealised. He gives no
criticism of the present conditions of life. Thus he never manages to
conceive the sensuous world as the total living sensuous activity of the
individuals composing it; therefore when, for example, he sees
instead of healthy men a crowd of scrofulous, overworked and
consumptive starvelings, he is compelled to take refuge in the
“higher perception” and in the ideal “compensation in the species”,
and thus to relapse into idealism at the very point where the
communist materialist sees the necessity, and at the same time the
condition, of a transformation both of industry and of the social
structure.

As far as Feuerbach is a materialist he does not deal with history,
and as far as he considers history he is not a materialist. With him
materialism and history diverge completely, a fact which incidentally
already follows from what has been said.*

[3. PRIMARY HISTORICAL RELATIONS,

OR THE BASIC ASPECTS OF SOCIAL ACTIVITY:

PRODUCTION OF THE MEANS OF SUBSISTENCE,

PRODUCTION OF NEW NEEDS, REPRODUCTION OF MEN (THE FAMILY),
SOCIAL INTERCOURSE, CONSCIOUSNESS]

1 1 1 1 ** Since we are dealing with the Germans, who are devoid of
premises, we must begin by stating the first premise of all human
existence and, therefore, of all history, the premise, namely, that
men must be in a position to live in order to be able to “make
history”. 3 But life involves before everything else eating and

* [The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:] The reason why we
nevertheless discuss history here in greater detail is that the words “history” and
“historical” usually mean everything possible to the Germans except reality, a brilliant
example of this is in particular Saint Bruno with his “pulpit eloquence”.

** [Marginal note by Marx:] History.

See this volume, pp. 56-57. — Ed.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

drinking, housing, clothing and various other things.* The first
historical act is thus the production of the means to satisfy these
needs, the production of material life itself. And indeed this is an
historical act, a fundamental condition of all history, which today, as
thousands of years ago, must daily and hourly be fulfilled merely in
order to sustain human life. Even when the sensuous world is
reduced to a minimum, to a stick 3 as with Saint Bruno, it
presupposes the action of producing this stick. Therefore in any
conception of history one has first of all to observe this fundamental
fact in all its significance and all its implications and to accord it its
due importance. It is well known that the Germans have never done
this, and they have never, therefore, had an earthly basis for history
and consequently never a historian. The French and the English,
even if they have conceived the relation of this fact with so-called
history only in an extremely one-sided fashion, especially since they
remained in the toils of political ideology, have nevertheless made
the first attempts to give the writing of history a materialistic basis by
being the first to write histories of civil society, of commerce and
industry. 16

The second point is [12] that the satisfaction of the first need, the
action of satisfying and the instrument of satisfaction which has been
acquired, leads to new needs; and this creation of new needs is the
first historical act. Here we recognise immediately the spiritual
ancestry of the great historical wisdom of the Germans who, when
they run out of positive material and when they can serve up neither
theological nor political nor literary rubbish, assert that this is not
history at all, but the “prehistoric age”. They do not, however,
enlighten us as to how we proceed from this nonsensical “prehis-
tory” to history proper; although, on the other hand, in their
historical speculation they seize upon this “prehistory” with especial
eagerness because they imagine themselves safe there from interfer-
ence on the part of “crude facts”, and, at the same time, because
there they can give full rein to their speculative impulse and set up
and knock down hypotheses by the thousand.

The third circumstance which, from the very outset, enters into
historical development, is that men, who daily re-create their own life,
begin to make other men, to propagate their kind: the relation

* [Marginal note by Marx:] Hegel Geological, hydrographical, etc., conditions. 15
Human bodies. Needs, labour.

a See Bruno Bauer’s article “Charakteristik Ludwig Feuerbachs”. Cf. this volume,
pp. 94, 104. — Ed.

The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach

between man and woman, parents and children, the family. The
family, which to begin with is the only social relation, becomes later,
when increased needs create new social relations and the increased
population new needs, a subordinate one (except in Germany), and
must then be treated and analysed according to the existing empirical
data, not according to “the concept of the family”, as is the custom in
Germany.

These three aspects of social activity are not of course to be taken
as three different stages, but just as three aspects or, to make it clear
to the Germans, three “moments”, which have existed simultaneous-
ly since the dawn of history and the first men, and which still assert
themselves in history today.

The production of life, both of one’s own in labour and of fresh
life in procreation, now appears as a twofold 1 13 1 relation: on the one
hand as a natural, on the other as a social relation — social in the
sense that it denotes the co-operation of several individuals, no
matter under what conditions, in what manner and to what end. It
follows from this that a certain mode of production, or industrial
stage, is always combined with a certain mode of co-operation, or
social stage, and this mode of co-operation is itself a “productive
force”. Further, that the aggregate of productive forces accessible to
men determines the condition of society, hence, the “history of
humanity” must always be studied and treated in relation to the
history of industry and exchange. But it is also clear that in Germany
it is impossible to write this sort of history, because the Germans lack
not only the necessary power of comprehension and the material but
also the “sensuous certainty”, for across the Rhine one cannot have
any experience of these things since there history has stopped
happening. Thus it is quite obvious from the start that there exists a
materialist connection of men with one another, which is determined
by their needs and their mode of production, and which is as old as
men themselves. This connection is ever taking on new forms,
and thus presents a “history” irrespective of the existence of any
political or religious nonsense which would especially hold men
together.

Only now, after having considered four moments, four aspects of
primary historical relations, do we find that man also possesses
“consciousness”.* But even from the outset this is not “pure”
consciousness. The “mind” is from the outset afflicted with 1 14 1 the

* [Marginal note by Marx:] Men have history because they must produce their life,
and because they must produce it moreover in a certain way: this is determined by
their physical organisation: their consciousness is determined in just the same way.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

curse of being “burdened” with matter, which here makes its
appearance in the form of agitated layers of air, sounds, in short,
of language. Language is as old as consciousness, language is
practical, real consciousness that exists for other men as well, and
only therefore does it also exist for me; language, like consciousness,
only arises from the need, the necessity, of intercourse with other
men.* Where there exists a relationship, it exists for me: the animal
does not “ relate ” itself to anything, it does not “ relate ” itself at all. For
the animal its relation to others does not exist as a relation.
Consciousness is, therefore, from the very beginning a social
product, and remains so as long as men exist at all. Consciousness is
at first, of course, merely consciousness concerning the immediate
sensuous environment and consciousness of the limited connection
with other persons and things outside the individual who is growing
self-conscious. At the same time it is consciousness of nature, which
first confronts men as a completely alien, all-powerful and unassail-
able force, with which men’s relations are purely animal and by which
they are overawed like beasts; it is thus a purely animal consciousness
of nature (natural religion) precisely because nature is as yet hardly
altered by history — on the other hand, it is man’s consciousness of
the necessity of associating with the individuals around him, the
beginning of the consciousness that he is living in society at all. This
beginning is as animal as social life itself at this stage. It is mere
herd-consciousness, and at this point man is distinguished from
sheep only by the fact that with him consciousness takes the place of
instinct or that his instinct is a conscious one.** This sheep-like or
tribal consciousness receives its further development and extension
through increased productivity, the increase of needs, and, what is
fundamental to both of these, 1 15 1 the increase of population. With
these there develops the division of labour, which was originally
nothing but the division of labour in the sexual act, then the division
of labour which develops spontaneously or “naturally” by virtue of
natural predisposition (e.g., physical strength), needs, accidents, etc.,
etc.*** Division of labour only becomes truly such from the moment

* [The following words are crossed out in the manuscript:] My relation to my
surroundings is my consciousness.

** [Marginal note by Marx:] We see here immediately: this natural religion or this
particular attitude to nature is determined by the form of society and vice versa. Here,
as everywhere, the identity of nature and man also appears in such a way that the
restricted attitude of men to nature determines their restricted relation to one
another, and their restricted attitude to one another determines men’s restricted
relation to nature.

*** [Marginal note by Marx, which is crossed out in the manuscript:] Men’s
consciousness develops in the course of actual historical development.

The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach

when a division of material and mental labour appears.* From this
moment onwards consciousness can really flatter itself that it is
something other than consciousness of existing practice, that it really
represents something without representing something real; from
now on consciousness is in a position to emancipate itself trom the
world and to proceed to the formation of “pure” theory, theology,
philosophy, morality, etc. But even if this theory, theology,
philosophy, morality, etc., come into contradiction with the existing
relations, this can only occur because existing social relations have
come into contradiction with existing productive forces; moreover,
in a particular national sphere of relations this can also occur
through the contradiction, arising not within the national orbit, but
between this national consciousness and the practice of other
nations,** i.e., between the national and the general consciousness of
a nation (as is happening now in Germany); but since this
contradiction appears to exist only as a contradiction within the
national consciousness, it seems to this nation that the struggle too is
confined to this |16| national muck, precisely because this nation
represents this muck as such.

Incidentally, it is quite immaterial what consciousness starts to
do on its own: out of all this trash we get only the one inference
that these three moments, the productive forces, the state of
society and consciousness, can and must come into contradiction
with one another, because the division of labour implies the possibility,
nay the fact, that intellectual and material activity,*** that enjoyment
and labour, production and consumption, devolve on different
individuals, and that the only possibility of their not coming into
contradiction lies in negating in its turn the division of labour. It is
self-evident, moreover, that “spectres”, “bonds”, “the higher
being”, “concept”, “scruple”, are merely idealist, speculative, mental
expressions, the concepts apparently of the isolated individual, the
mere images of very empirical fetters and limitations, within which
move the mode of production of life, and the form of intercourse
coupled with it.****

* [Marginal note by Marx:] The first form of ideologists, priests, is coincident

** [Marginal note by Marx:] Religions. The Germans and ideology as such.

*** [Marginal note by Marx, which is crossed out in the manuscript:] activity
and thinking, i.e., action without thought and thought without action.

**** [The following sentence is crossed out in the manuscript:] This idealist
expression of actually present economic limitations exists not only purely theoretically
but also in the practical consciousness, i.e., consciousness which emancipates itself and
comes into contradiction with the existing mode of production devises not only
religions and philosophies but also states.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

[4. SOCIAL DIVISION OF LABOUR AND ITS CONSEQUENCES:

PRIVATE PROPERTY, THE STATE,

“ESTRANGEMENT” OF SOCIAL ACTIVITY]

The division of labour in which all these contradictions are
implicit, and which in its turn is based on the natural division of
labour in the family and the separation of society into individual
families opposed to one another, simultaneously implies the
distribution, and indeed the unequal distribution, both quantitative
and qualitative, of labour and its products, hence property, 1 1 7 1 the
nucleus, the first form of which lies in the family, where wife and
children are the slaves of the husband. This latent slavery in the
family, though still very crude, is the first form of property, but even
at this stage it corresponds perfectly to the definition of modern
economists, who call it the power of disposing of the labour-power of
others. Division of labour and private property are, after all,
identical expressions: in the one the same thing is affirmed with
reference to activity as is affirmed in the other with reference to the
product of the activity.

Further, the division of labour also implies the contradiction
between the interest of the separate individual or the individual
family and the common interest of all individuals who have
intercourse with one another. And indeed, this common interest
does not exist merely in the imagination, as the “general interest”,
but first of all in reality, as the mutual interdependence of the
individuals among whom the labour is divided. 3

Out of this very contradiction between the particular and the
common interests, the common interest assumes an independent
form as the state, which is divorced from the real individual and
collective interests, and at the same time as an illusory community,
always based, however, on the real ties existing in every family
conglomeration and tribal conglomeration — such as flesh and blood,
language, division of labour on a larger scale, and other inter-
ests — and especially, as we shall show later, on the classes, already
implied by the division of labour, which in every such mass of men
separate out, and one of which dominates all the others. It follows
from this that all struggles within the state, the struggle between
democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy, the struggle for the fran-
chise, etc., etc., are merely the illusory forms — altogether the general

3 The following two paragraphs are written in the margin: the first by Engels and
the second by Marx. — Ed.

The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach

interest is the illusory form of common interests — in which the real
struggles of the different classes are fought out among one another
(of this the German theoreticians have not the faintest inkling,
although they have received a sufficient initiation into the subject in
the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbiicher 17 and Die heilige Familie). Further,
it follows that every class which is aiming at domination, even when its
domination, as is the case with the proletariat, leads to the abolition
of the old form of society in its entirety and of domination in general,
must first conquer political power in order to represent its interest
in turn as the general interest, which in the first moment it is
forced to do.

Just because individuals seek only their particular interest, which
for them does not coincide with their common interest, the latter is
asserted as an interest “alien” [“fremd”] to them, and 1 1 8 1
“independent” of them, as in its turn a particular and distinctive
“general” interest; or they themselves must remain within this
discord, as in democracy. On the other hand, too, the practical
struggle of these particular interests, which actually constantly run
counter to the common and illusory common interests, necessitates
practical intervention and restraint by the illusory “general” interest
in the form of the state.

1 1 7 1 And finally, the division of labour offers us the first example
of the fact that, as long as man remains in naturally evolved society,
that is, as long as a cleavage exists between the particular and the
common interest, as long, therefore, as activity is not voluntarily, but
naturally, divided, man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed
to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him. For as
soon as the division of labour comes into being, each man has a
particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and
from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a
shepherd, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want
to lose his means of livelihood; whereas in communist society, where
nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become
accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general
production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today
and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the
afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I
have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd
or critic.

1 18 1 This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we
ourselves produce into a material power above us, growing out of
our, control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our
calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

till now. 3 The social power, i.e., the multiplied productive force,
which arises through the co-operation of different individuals as it is
caused by the division of labour, appears to these individuals, since
their co-operation is not voluntary but has come about naturally, not
as their own united power, but as an alien force existing outside
them, of the origin and goal of which they are ignorant, which they
thus are no longer able to control, which on the contrary passes
through a peculiar series of phases and stages independent of the
will and the action 18 of man, nay even being the prime governor of
these. How otherwise could for instance property have had a history
at all, have taken on different forms, and landed property, for
example, according to the different premises given, have
proceeded in France from parcellation to centralisation in the hands
of a few, in England from centralisation in the hands of a few to
parcellation, as is actually the case today? Or how does it happen that
trade, which after all is nothing more than the exchange of products
of various individuals and countries, rules the whole world through
the relation of supply and demand — a relation which, as an English
economist says, hovers over the earth like the fate of the ancients,
and with invisible hand allots fortune and misfortune to men, sets up
empires |19| and wrecks empires, causes nations to rise and to
disappear — whereas with the abolition of the basis, private property,
with the communistic regulation of production (and, implicit in this,
the abolition of the alien attitude [Fremdheit] of men to their own
product), the power of the relation of supply and demand is dissolved
into nothing, and men once more gain control of exchange,
production and the way they behave to one another?

[5. DEVELOPMENT OF THE PRODUCTIVE FORCES
AS A MATERIAL PREMISE OF COMMUNISM]

[ 18 1 This “estrangement” [“ Entfremdung ”] (to use a term which
will be comprehensible to the philosophers) can, of course, only be
abolished given two practical premises. In order to become an
“unendurable” power, i.e., a power against which men make a revolu-
tion, it must necessarily have rendered the great mass of humanity
“propertyless”, and moreover in contradiction to an existing world
of wealth and culture; both these premises presuppose a great
increase in productive power, a high degree of its development.

a Here Marx added a passage in the margin which is given in this edition as the
first two paragraphs of Section 5. — Ed.

The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach

And, on the other hand, this development of productive forces
(which at the same time implies the actual empirical existence of men
in their world-historical, instead of local, being) is an absolutely
necessary practical premise, because without it privation, want is
merely made general, and with want the struggle for necessities
would begin again, and all the old filthy business would necessarily
be restored; and furthermore, because only with this universal
development of productive forces is a universal intercourse between
men established, which on the one side produces in all nations
simultaneously the phenomenon of the “propertyless” mass (univer-
sal competition), making each nation dependent on the revolutions
of the others, and finally puts world-historical, empirically universal
individuals in place of local ones. Without this, 1) communism could
only exist as a local phenomenon; 2) the forces of intercourse
themselves could not have developed as universal, hence unendurable
powers: they would have remained home-bred “conditions” sur-
rounded by superstition; and 3) each extension of intercourse would
abolish local communism. Empirically, communism is only possible
as the act of the dominant peoples “all at once” and simultaneously, 19
which presupposes the universal development of productive forces
and the world intercourse bound up with them.*

[19 1 Moreover, the mass of workers who are nothing but
workers — labour-power on a mass scale cut off from capital or from
even a limited satisfaction [of their needs] and, hence, as a result of
competition their utterly precarious position, the no longer merely
temporary loss of work as a secure source of life — presupposes the
world market. The proletariat can thus only exist world-historically, just
as communism, its activity, can only have a “world-historical”
existence. World-historical existence of individuals, i.e., existence of
individuals which is directly linked up with world history.

1 1 8 1 Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be
established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We
call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state
of things. The conditions of this movement result from the now
existing premise. 3

* * *

* [Above the continuation of this passage, which follows on the next page of the
manuscript, Marx wrote:] Communism.

3 In the manuscript this paragraph was written down by Marx in a free space
above the paragraph starting with the words: This “estrangement”. — Ed.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

1 1 9| The form of intercourse determined by the existing
productive forces at all previous historical stages, and in its turn
determining these, is civil society. The latter, as is clear from what we
have said above, has as its premise and basis the simple family
and the multiple, called the tribe, and the more precise definition of
this society is given in our remarks above. Already here we see that
this civil society is the true focus and theatre of all history, and
how absurd is the conception of history held hitherto, which neg-
lects the real relations and confines itself to spectacular historical
events. 20

In the main we have so far considered only one aspect of human
activity, the reshaping of nature by men. The other aspect, the
reshaping of men by men. ... *

Origin of the state and the relation of the state to civil society. 3

[6. CONCLUSIONS FROM THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION
OF HISTORY: HISTORY AS A CONTINUOUS PROCESS,

HISTORY AS BECOMING WORLD HISTORY,

THE NECESSITY OF COMMUNIST REVOLUTION]

1 20 1 History is nothing but the succession of the separate
generations, each of which uses the materials, the capital funds, the
productive forces handed down to it by all preceding generations,
and thus, on the one hand, continues the traditional activity in
completely changed circumstances and, on the other, modifies the
old circumstances with a completely changed activity. This can be
speculatively distorted so that later history is made the goal of earlier
history, e.g., the goal ascribed to the discovery of America is to
further the eruption of the French Revolution. Thereby history
receives its own special goals and becomes “a person ranking with
other persons” (to wit: “self-consciousness, criticism, the unique”,
etc.), while what is designated with the words “destiny”, “goal”,
“germ”, or “idea” of earlier history is nothing more than an
abstraction from later history, from the active influence which earlier
history exercises on later history.

The further the separate spheres, which act on one another,
extend in the course of this development and the more the original
isolation of the separate nationalities is destroyed by the advanced

* [Marginal note by Marx:] Intercourse and productive power.

a The end of this page of the manuscript is left blank. The next page begins with
an exposition of the conclusions from the materialist conception of history. — Ed.

The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach

mode of production, by intercourse and by the natural division of
labour Between various nations arising as a result, the more history
becomes world history. Thus, for instance, if in England a machine is
invented which deprives countless workers of bread in India and
China, and overturns the whole form of existence of these empires,
this invention becomes a world-historical fact. Or again, take the case
of sugar and coffee, which have proved their world-historical
importance in the nineteenth century by the fact that the lack of
these products, occasioned by the Napoleonic Continental System, 21
caused the Germans [21] to rise against Napoleon, and thus became
the real basis of the glorious Wars of Liberation of 1813. From this it
follows that this transformation of history into world history is by no
means a mere abstract act on the part of “self-consciousness”, the
world spirit, or of any other metaphysical spectre, but a quite
material, empirically verifiable act, an act the proof of which every
individual furnishes as he comes and goes, eats, drinks and clothes
himself.

In history up to the present it is certainly likewise an empirical fact
that separate individuals have, with the broadening of their activity
into world-historical activity, become more and more enslaved under
a power alien to them (a pressure which they have conceived of as a
dirty trick on the part of the so-called world spirit, etc.), a power
which has become more and more enormous and, in the last
instance, turns out to be the world market. But it is just as empirically
established that, by the overthrow of the existing state of society by
the communist revolution (of which more below) and the abolition of
private property which is identical with it, this power, which so
baffles the German theoreticians, will be dissolved; and that then the
liberation of each single individual will be accomplished in the
measure in which history becomes wholly transformed into world
history.* From the above it is clear that the real intellectual wealth of
the individual depends entirely on the wealth of his real connections.
Only this will liberate the separate individuals from the various
national and local barriers, bring them into practical connection with
the production (including intellectual production) of the whole
world and make it possible for them to acquire the capacity to enjoy
this all-sided production of the whole earth (the creations of man).
All-round dependence, this primary natural form of the world-
historical co-operation of individuals, will be transformed by [22] this
communist revolution into the control and conscious mastery of
these powers, which, born of the action of men on one another, have

[Marginal note by Marx:] On the production of consciousness.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

till now overawed and ruled men as powers completely alien to them.
Now this view can be expressed again in a speculative-idealistic, i.e.,
fantastic, way as “self-generation of the species” (“society as the
subject”), and thereby the consecutive series of interrelated individu-
als can be regarded as a single individual, which accomplishes the
mystery of generating itself. In this context it is evident that
individuals undoubtedly make one another, physically and mentally,
but do not make themselves, either in the nonsense of Saint Bruno,
or in the sense of the “unique”, of the “made” man.

Finally, from the conception of history set forth by us we obtain
these further conclusions: 1) In the development of productive
forces there comes a stage when productive forces and means of
intercourse are brought into being which, under the existing
relations, only cause mischief, and are no longer productive but
destructive forces (machinery and money); and connected with this a
class is called forth which has to bear all the burdens of society
without enjoying its advantages, which is ousted from society and
[23] forced into the sharpest contradiction to all other classes; a class
which forms the majority of all members of society, and from which
emanates the consciousness of the necessity of a fundamental
revolution, the communist consciousness, which may, of course, arise
among the other classes too through the contemplation of the
situation of this class. 2) The conditions under which definite
productive forces can be applied are the conditions of the rule of a
definite class of society, whose social power, deriving from its
property, has its practical-idealistic expression in each case in the
form of the state and, therefore, every revolutionary struggle is
directed against a class which till then has been in power.* 3) In all
previous revolutions the mode of activity always remained un-
changed and it was only a question of a different distribution of this
activity, a new distribution of labour to other persons, whilst the
communist revolution is directed against the hitherto existing mode
of activity, does away with labour,** and abolishes the rule of all
classes with the classes themselves, because it is carried through by
the class which no longer counts as a class in society, which is not
recognised as a class, and is in itself the expression of the dissolution
of all classes, nationalities, etc., within present society; and 4) Both
for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness,

* [Marginal note by Marx:] These men are interested in maintaining the
present state of production.

** [The following words are crossed out in the manuscript:] the modern form of
activity under the rule of [...].

The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach

and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass
scale is necessary, an alteration which can only take place in a
practical movement, a revolution ; the revolution is necessary,
therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in
any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a
revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and
become fitted to found society anew.*

[7. SUMMARY OF THE MATERIALIST CONCEPTION
OF HISTORY]

|24(This conception of history thus relies on expounding the real
process of production — starting from the material production of life
itself — ^and comprehending the form of intercourse connected with
and created by this mode of production, i.e., civil society in its various
stages, as the basis of all history; describing it in its action as the state,
and also explaining how all the different theoretical products and
forms of consciousness, religion, philosophy, morality, etc., etc., arise
from it, and tracing the process of their formation from that basis;
thus the whole thing can, of course, be depicted in its totality (and
therefore, too, the reciprocal action of these various sides on one
another). It has not, like the idealist view of history, to look for a
category in every period, but remains constantly on the real ground of

* [The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:] Whereas all
communists in France as well as in England and Germany have long since agreed on
the necessity of the revolution, Saint Bruno quietly continues to dream, opining that
“real humanism”, i. e., communism, is to take “the place of spiritualism” (which has
no place) only in order that it may gain respect. Then, he continues in his dream,
“salvation” would indeed “be attained, the earth becoming heaven, and heaven
earth”. (The theologian is still unable to forget heaven.) “Then joy and bliss will
resound in celestial harmonies to all eternity” (p. 140). a The holy father of the
church will be greatly surprised when judgment day overtakes him, the day when all
this is to come to pass — a day when the reflection in the sky of burning cities will mark
the dawn, when together with the “celestial harmonies” the tunes of the Marseillaise
and Carmagnole will echo in his ears accompanied by the requisite roar of cannon, with
the guillotine beating time; when the infamous “masses” will shout fa ira, f a ira and
suspend “self-consciousness” by means of the lamp-post. 22 Saint Bruno has no reason
at all to draw an edifying picture “of joy and bliss to all eternity”. We forego the
pleasure of a priori forecasting Saint Bruno’s conduct on judgment day. Moreover, it
is really difficult to decide whether the proletaires en revolution have to be conceived as
“substance”, as “mass”, desiring to overthrow' criticism, or as an “emanation” of the
spirit which is, however, still lacking the consistency necessary to digest Bauer’s ideas.

Bruno Bauer, “Charakteristik Ludwig Feuerbachs”. — Ed.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

history; it does not explain practice from the idea but explains the
formation of ideas from material practice, and accordingly it comes to
the conclusion that all forms and products of consciousness cannot be
dissolved by mental criticism, by resolution into “self-consciousness”
or transformation into “apparitions”, “spectres”, “whimsies”, 3 etc.,
but only by the practical overthrow of the actual social relations which
gave rise to this idealistic humbug; that not criticism but revolution is
the driving force of history, also of religion, of philosophy and all
other kinds of theory. It shows that history does not end by being
resolved into “self-consciousness” as “spirit of the spirit”, b but that
each stage contains a material result, a sum of productive forces, a
historically created relation to nature and of individuals to one
another, which is handed down to each generation from its
predecessor; a mass of productive forces, capital funds and
circumstances, which on the one hand is indeed modified by the new
generation, but on the other also prescribes for it its conditions of life
and gives it a definite development, a special character. It shows that
circumstances make [25] men just as much as men make
circumstances.

This sum of productive forces, capital funds and social forms of
intercourse, which every individual and every generation finds in
existence as something given, is the real basis of what the
philosophers have conceived as “substance” and “essence of man”,
and what they have deified and attacked: a real basis which is not in
the least disturbed, in its effect and influence on the development of
men, by the fact that these philosophers revolt against it as
“self-consciousness” and the “unique”. These conditions of life,
which different generations find in existence, determine also
whether or not the revolutionary convulsion periodically recurring
in history will be strong enough to overthrow the basis of everything
that exists. And if these material elements of a complete revolution are
not present — namely, on the one hand the existing productive
forces, on the other the formation of a revolutionary mass, which
revolts not only against separate conditions of the existing society,
but against the existing “production of life” itself, the “total activity”
on which it was based — then it is absolutely immaterial for practical
development whether the idea of this revolution has been expres-
sed a hundred times already, as the history of communism proves.

a These terms are used by Max Stirner in Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum. Cf.
pp. 157-63 of this volume. — Ed.

The terms are used by Bruno Bauer in “Charakteristik Ludwig Feuer-
bachs”. — Ed.

The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach

[8. THE INCONSISTENCY OF THE IDEALIST CONCEPTION
OF HISTORY IN GENERAL AND OF GERMAN POST-HEGELIAN
PHILOSOPHY IN PARTICULAR]

In the whole conception of history up to the present this real basis
of history has either been totally disregarded or else considered as a
minor matter quite irrelevant to the course of history. History must,
therefore, always be written according to an extraneous standard;
the real production of life appears as non-historical, while the histori-
cal appears as something separated from ordinary life, something
extra-superterrestrial. With this the relation of man to nature is
excluded from history and hence the antithesis of nature and history
is created. The exponents of this conception of history have
consequently only been able to see in history the spectacular political
events and religious and other theoretical struggles, and in particular
with regard to each historical epoch they were compelled to share the
illusion of that epoch. For instance, if an epoch imagines itself to be
actuated by purely ‘ political” or “religious” motives, although
“religion” and ‘ politics” are only forms of its true motives, the
historian accepts this opinion. The “fancy”, the “conception” of the
people in question about their real practice is transformed into the
soie determining and effective force, which dominates and deter-
mines their practice. When the crude form of the division of labour
which is to be found among the Indians and Egyptians calls forth the
caste-svstem in their state and religion, the historian believes that the
caste-system [26] is the power which has produced this crude social
form.

While the French and the English at least stick to the political
illusion, which is after all closer to reality, the Germans move in the
realm of the “pure spirit”, and make religious illusion the driving
force of history. The Hegelian philosophy of history is the last
consequence, reduced to its “clearest expression”, of all this German
historiography for which it is not a question of real, nor even of poli-
tical, interests, but of pure thoughts, which must therefore appear to
Saint Bruno as a series of “thoughts” that devour one another and
are finally swallowed up in “self-consciousness” *; and even more
consistently the course of history must appear to Saint Max Stirner,
who knows not a thing about real history, as a mere “tale of knights,
robbers and ghosts”, 24 from whose visions he can, of course, only save
himself by “unholiness”. This conception is truly religious: it
postulates religious man as the primitive man, the starting-point of

* [Marginal note by Marx:] So-called objective historiography 23 consisted precisely
in treating the historical relations separately from activity. Reactionary character.

4—2086

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

history, and in its imagination puts the religious production of fancies
in the place of the real production of the means of subsistence and of
life itself.

This whole conception of history, together with its dissolution and
the scruples and qualms resulting from it, is a purely national affair
of the Germans and has merely local interest for Germany, as for
instance the important question which has been under discussion in
recent times: how exactly one “passes from the realm of God to the
realm of Man” 3 — as if this “realm of God” had ever existed
anywhere save in the imagination, and the learned gentlemen,
without being aware of it, were not constantly living in the “realm of
Man” to which they are now seeking the way; and as if the learned
pastime (for it is nothing more) of explaining the mystery of this
theoretical bubble-blowing did not on the contrary lie in demonstrat-
ing its origin in actual earthly relations. For these Germans, it is
altogether simply a matter of resolving the ready-made nonsense
they find into [27] some other freak, i.e., of presupposing that all
this nonsense has a special sense which can be discovered; while really
it is only a question of explaining these theoretical phrases from the
actual existing relations. The real, practical dissolution of these
phrases, the removal of these notions from the consciousness of
men, will, as we have already said, be effected by altered circum-
stances, not by theoretical deductions. For the mass of men, i.e.,
the proletariat, these theoretical notions do not exist and hence do
not require to be dissolved, and if this mass ever had any theoret-
ical notions, e.g., religion, these have now long been dissolved by
circumstances.

The purely national character of these questions and solutions is
moreover shown by the fact that these theorists believe in all
seriousness that chimeras like “the God-Man”, “Man”, etc., have
presided over individual epochs of history (Saint Bruno even goes so
far as to assert that only “criticism and critics have made history”, 1 ’
and when they themselves construct historical systems, they skip over
all earlier periods in the greatest haste and pass immediately from
“Mongolism” c to history “with meaningful content”, that is to say, to
the history of the Hallische and Deutsche Jahrhiicher and the
dissolution of the Hegelian school into a general squabble. They
forget all other nations, all real events, and the theatrum mundi is

3 Ludwig Feuerbach, “Ueber das ‘Wesen des Christenthums’.;.”. — Ed.

Bruno Bauer, “Charakteristik Ludwig Feuerbachs”. — Ed.
c Max Stirner, Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum. Cf. this volume, pp. 130-36. and
pp. 163-70. — Ed.

The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach

confined to the Leipzig book fair and the mutual quarrels of
“criticism”, “man”, and “the unique”. 3 If for once these theorists
treat really historical subjects, as for instance the eighteenth century,
they merely give a history of ideas, separated from the facts and the
practical development underlying them; and even that merely in
order to represent that period as an imperfect preliminary stage, the
as yet limited predecessor of the truly historical age, i.e., the period
of the German philosophic struggle from 1840 to 1844. As might be
expected when the history of an earlier period is written with the aim
of accentuating the brilliance of an unhistoric person and his
fantasies, all the really historic events, even the really historic
interventions of politics in history, receive no mention. Instead we get
a narrative based not on research but on arbitrary constructions and
literary gossip, such as Saint Bruno provided in his now forgotten
history of the eighteenth century. b These pompous and arrogant
hucksters of ideas, who imagine themselves infinitely exalted above all
national prejudices, are thus in practice far more national than the
beer-swilling philistines who dream of a united Germany. They do not
recognise the deeds of other nations as historical; they live in Germa-
ny, within Germany |28| and for Germany; they turn the Rhine-
song 25 into a religious hymn and conquer Alsace and Lorraine by
robbing French philosophy instead of the French state, by Germani-
sing French ideas instead of French provinces. Herr Venedey is a
cosmopolitan compared with the Saints Bruno and Max, who, in
the universal dominance of theory, proclaim the universal dominan -
ce of Germany.

[9. IDEALIST CONCEPTION OF HISTORY
AND FEUERBACH’S QUASI-COMMUNISM]

It is also clear from these arguments how grossly Feuerbach is
deceiving himself when (Wigand’s Vierteljahrsschrift , 1845, Band 2) by
virtue of the qualification “common man” he declares himself a
communist, 26 transforms the latter into a predicate of “Man”, and
thinks that it is thus possible to change the word “communist”,
which in the real world means the follower of a definite revolution-
ary party, into a mere category. Feuerbach’s whole deduction with
regard to the relation of men to one another is only aimed at proving
that men need and always have needed each other. He wants to

3 I. e., Bruno Bauer, Ludwig Feuerbach and Max Stirner. — Ed.
b Bruno Bauer, Geschichte der Politik, Cultur und Aufklarung des achtzehnten Jahr-
hmiderts. — Ed.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

establish consciousness of this fact, that is to say, like the other
theorists, he merely wants to produce a correct consciousness about
an existing fact; whereas for the real Communist it is a question of
overthrowing the existing state of things. We fully appreciate,
however, that Feuerbach, in endeavouring to produce consciousness
of just this fact, is going as far as a theorist possibly can, without
ceasing to be a theorist and philosopher. It is characteristic, however,
that Saint Bruno and Saint Max immediately put in place of the real
communist Feuerbach’s conception of the communist; they do this
partly in order to be able to combat communism too as “spirit of the
spirit”, as a philosophical category, as an equal opponent and, in the
case of Saint Bruno, also for pragmatic reasons.

As an example of Feuerbach’s acceptance and at the same time
misunderstanding of existing reality, which he still shares with our
opponents, we recall the passage in the Philosophic der Zukunft where
he develops the view that the being of a thing or a man is at the
same time its or his essence, 3 that the determinate conditions of
existence, the mode of life and activity of an animal or human
individual are those in which its “essence” feels itself satisfied. Here
every exception is expressly conceived as an unhappy chance, as an
abnormality which cannot be altered. Thus if millions of proletarians
feel by no means contented with their' living conditions, if their
“being” |29| does not in the least correspond to their “essence”,
then, according to the passage quoted, this is an unavoidable
misfortune, which must be borne quietly. These millions of pro-
letarians or communists, however, think quite differently and will
prove this in time, when they bring their “being” into harmony
with their “essence” in a practical way, by means of a revolution.
Feuerbach, therefore, never speaks of the world of man in such
cases, but always takes refuge in external nature, and moreover in
nature which has not yet been subdued by men. But every new
invention, every advance made by industry, detaches another piece
from this domain, so that the ground which produces examples
illustrating such Feuerbachian propositions is steadily shrinking.
The “essence” of the fish is its “being”, water — to go no further
than this one proposition. The “essence” of the freshwater fish is the
water of a river. But the latter ceases to be the “essence” of the fish
and is no longer a suitable medium of existence as soon as the
river is made to serve industry, as soon as it is polluted by dyes and
other waste products and navigated by steamboats, or as soon as its
water is diverted into canals where simple drainage can deprive the

a Cf. this volume, p. 13. — Ed.

The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach

fish of its medium of existence. The explanation that all such
contradictions are inevitable abnormalities does not essentially differ
from the consolation which Saint Max Stirner offers to the
discontented, saying that this contradiction is their own contradiction
and this predicament their own predicament, whereupon they
should either set their minds at ease, keep their disgust to
themselves, or revolt against it in some fantastic way. It differs just as
little from Saint Brunos allegation that these unfortunate cir-
cumstances are due to the fact that those concerned are stuck in the
muck of “substance”, ’nave not advanced to “absolute self-
consciousness”, and do not realise that these adverse conditions are
spirit of their spirit.' 1

[Ill]

[I. THE RULING CLASS AND THE RULING IDEAS.

HOW THE HEGELIAN CONCEPTION OF THE DOMINATION
OF THE SPIRIT IN HISTORY AROSE]

1 30 i The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling
ideas: i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society is at
the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the
means of material production at its disposal, consequently also
controls the means of mental production, so that the ideas of these
who iack the means of mental production are on the whole subject to
it. The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the
dominant material relations, the dominant material relations
grasped as ideas; hence of the relations which make the one
ciass the ruling one, therefore, the ideas of its dominance. The
individuals composing the ruling class possess among other things
consciousness, and therefore think. Insofar, therefore, as they rule
as a class and determine the extent and compass of an historical
epoch, it is self-evident that they do this in its whole range, hence
among other tilings rule also as thinkers, as producers of ideas, and
regulate the production and distribution of the ideas of their age:
thus their ideas are the ruling ideas of the epoch. For instance, in an
age and in a country where royal power, aristocracy and bourgeoisie
are contending for domination and where, therefore, domination
is shared, the doctrine of the separation of powers proves to be
the dominant idea and is expressed as an “eternal law”.

The division of labour, which we already saw above (pp. [15-18]) b
as one of the chief forces of history up till now, manifests itself also in

3 Bruno Bauer, Charakteristik Ludwig Feuerbachs”. — Ed.
h See this volume, pp. 44-48. — Ed.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

the ruling class as the division of mental and [3 1 1 material labour, so
that inside this class one part appears as the thinkers of the class (its
active, conceptive ideologists, who make the formation of the
illusions of the class about itself their chief source of livelihood),
while the others’ attitude to these ideas and illusions is more passive
and receptive, because they are in reality the active members of this
class and have less time to make up illusions and ideas about
themselves. Within this class this cleavage can even develop into a
certain opposition and hostility between the two parts, but whenever
a practical collision occurs in which the class itself is endangered they
automatically vanish, in which case there also vanishes the
appearance of the ruling ideas being not the ideas of the ruling class
and having a power distinct from the power of this class. The
existence of revolutionary ideas in a particular period presupposes
the existence of a revolutionary class: about the premises of the
latter sufficient has already been said above (pp. [18-19, 22-23]). a

If now in considering the course of history we detach the ideas of
the ruling class from the ruling class itself and attribute to them an
independent existence, if we confine ourselves to saying that these or
those ideas were dominant at a given time, without bothering
ourselves about the conditions of production and the producers of
these ideas, if we thus ignore the individuals and world conditions
which are the source of the ideas, then we can say, for instance, that
during the time the aristocracy was dominant, the concepts honour,
loyalty, etc., were dominant, during the dominance of the
bourgeoisie the concepts freedom, equality, etc. The ruling class
itself on the whole imagines this to be so. This conception of history,
which is common to all historians, particularly since the eighteenth
century, will necessarily come up against [32] the phenomenon that
ever more abstract ideas hold sway, i.e., ideas which increasingly
take on the form of universality. For each new class which puts itself
in the place of one ruling before it is compelled, merely in order to
carry through its aim, to present its interest as the common interest
of all the members of society, that is, expressed in ideal form: it has
to give its ideas the form of universality, and present them as the only
rational, universally valid ones. The class making a revolution comes
forward from the very start, if only because it is opposed to a class,
not as a class but as the representative of the whole of society, as the
whole mass of society confronting the one ruling class.* It can do this

* [Marginal note by Marx:] (Universality corresponds to 1) the class versus the
estate, 2) the competition, world intercourse, etc., 3) the great numerical strength

a See this volume, pp. 48-49 and 52-53. — Ed.

The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach

because initially its interest really is as yet mostly connected with the
common interest of all other non-ruling classes, because under the
pressure of hitherto existing conditions its interest has not yet been
able to develop as the particular interest of a particular class. Its
victory, therefore, benefits also many individuals of other classes
which are not winning a dominant position, but only insofar as it now
enables these individuals to raise themselves into the ruling class.
When the French bourgeoisie overthrew the rule of the aristocra-
cy, it thereby made it possible for many proletarians to raise
themselves above the proletariat, but only insofar as they became
bourgeois. Every new class, therefore, achieves domination only on
a broader basis than that of the class ruling previously; on the other
hand the opposition of the non-ruling class to the new ruling class
then develops all the more sharply and profoundly. Both these
things determine the fact that the struggle to be waged against this
new ruling class, in its turn, has as its aim a more decisive and more
radical negation of the previous conditions of society than [33] all
previous classes which sought to rule could have.

This whole appearance, that the rule of a certain class is only the
rule of certain ideas, comes to a natural end, of course, as soon as
class rule in general ceases to be the form in which society is
organised, that is to say, as soon as it is no longer necessary to
represent a particular interest as general or the “general interest” as
ruling.

Once the ruling ideas have been separated from the ruling
individuals and, above all, from the relations which result from a
given stage of the mode of production, and in this way the conclusion
has been reached that history is always under the sway of ideas, it is
very easy to abstract from these various ideas “the Idea”, the thought,
etc., as the dominant force in history, and thus to consider all these
separate ideas and concepts as “forms of self-determination” of the
Concept developing in history. It follows then naturally, too, that all
the relations of men can be derived from the concept of man, man as
conceived, the essence of man, Man. This has been done by
speculative philosophy. Hegel himself confesses at the end of the
Geschichtsphilosophi ? that he “has considered the progress of the
concept only” and has represented in history the “true theodicy ”
(p. 446). Now one can go back again to the producers of “the con-

of the ruling class, 4) the illusion of the common interests, in the beginning this
illusion is true, 5) the delusion of the ideologists and the division of labour.)

? G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen Ober die Philosophic der Geschichte. — Ed.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

cept”, to the theorists, ideologists and philosophers, and one comes
then to the conclusion that the philosophers, the thinkers as such,
have at all times been dominant in history: a conclusion, as we see, 27
already expressed by Hegel.

The whole trick of proving the hegemony of the spirit in history
(hierarchy Stirner calls it) is thus confined to the following three
attempts.

j 34 1 No. 1. One must separate the ideas of those ruling for
empirical reasons, under empirical conditions and as corporeal
individuals, from these rulers, and thus recognise the rule of ideas or
illusions in history.

No. 2. One must bring an order into this rule of ideas, prove a
mystical connection among the successive ruling ideas, which is
managed by regarding them as “forms of self-determination of the
concept” (this is possible because by virtue of their empirical basis
these ideas are really connected with one another and because,
conceived as mere ideas, they become self-distinctions, distinctions
made by thought).

No. 3. To remove the mystical appearance of this “self-
determining concept” it is changed into a person — “self-
consciousness” — or, to appear thoroughly materialistic, into a series
of persons, who represent the “concept” in history, into the
“thinkers”, the “philosophers”, the ideologists, who again are
understood as the manufacturers of history, as the “council of
guardians”, as the rulers.* Thus the whole body of materialistic
elements has been eliminated from history and now full rein can be
given to the speculative steed.

This historical method which reigned in Germany, and especiallv
the reason why, must be explained from its connection with the
illusion of ideologists in general, e.g., the illusions of the jurists,
politicians (including the practical statesmen), from the dogmatic
dreamings and distortions of these fellows; this is explained
perfectly easily from then practical position in life, their job,
and the division of labour.

1 35 1 Whilst in ordinary life every shopkeeper 3 is very well able to
distinguish between what somebody professes to be and what he
really is, our historiography has not yet won this trivial insight. It takes
every epoch at its word and believes that everything it says and
imagines about itself is true.

* [Marginal note by Marx:] Man = the “thinking human spirit”.

3 This word is in English in the manuscript. — Ed.

The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach

[IV]

[1. INSTRUMENTS OF PRODUCTION
AND FORMS OF PROPERTY]

[...] a 1 40 1 From the first point, there follows the premise of a highly
developed division of labour and an extensive commerce; from the
second, the locality. In the first case the individuals must have been
brought together, in the second they are instruments of production
alongside the given instrument of production.

Here, therefore, emerges the difference between natural instru-
ments of production and those created by civilisation. The field
(water, etc.) can be regarded as a natural instrument of production.
In the first case, that of the natural instrument of production,
individuals are subservient to nature; in the second, to a product of
labour. In the first case, therefore, property (landed property)
appears as direct natural domination, in the second, as domination
of labour, particularly of accumulated labour, capital. The first case
presupposes that the individuals are united by some bond: family,
tribe, the land itself, etc.; the second, that they are independent of
one another and are only held together by exchange. In the first
case, what is involved is chiefly an exchange between men and nature
in which the labour of the former is exchanged for the products of
the latter; in the second, it is predominantly an exchange of men
among themselves. In the first case, average human common sense is
adequate — physical activity and mental activity are not yet separated;
in the second, the division between physical and mental labour must
already have been effected in practice. In the first case, the
domination of the proprietor over the propertyless may be based on
personal relations, on a kind of community; in the second, it must
have taken on a material shape in a third party — money. In the first
case, small-scale industry exists, but determined by the utilisation of
the natural instrument of production and therefore without the
distribution of labour among various individuals; in the second,
industry exists only in and through the division of labour.

1 4 1 1 Our investigation hitherto started from the instruments of
production, and it has already shown that private property was a
necessity for certain industrial stages. In industrie extractive 28 private
property still coincides with labour; in small-scale industry and all
agriculture up till now property is the necessary consequence of the
existing instruments of production; the contradiction between the
instrument of production and private property is only the product of

Four pages of the manuscript are missing. — Ed.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

large-scale industry, which, moreover, must be highly developed to
produce this contradiction. Thus only with large-scale industry does
the abolition of private property become possible.

[2. THE DIVISION OF MATERIAL AND MENTAL LABOUR.

SEPARATION OF TOWN AND COUNTRY.

THE GUILD-SYSTEM]

The most important division of material and mental labour is the
separation of town and country. The contradiction between town
and country begins with the transition from barbarism to civilisation,
from tribe to state, from locality to nation, and runs through the
whole history of civilisation to the present day (the Anti-Corn Law
League 29 ).

The advent of the town implies, at the same time, the necessity of
administration, police, taxes, etc., in short, of the municipality [des
Gemeindewesens], and thus of politics in general. Here first became
manifest the division of the population into two great classes, which is
directly based on the division of labour and on the instruments of
production. The town is in actual fact already the concentration of the
population, of the instruments of production, of capital, of pleasures,
of needs, while the country demonstrates just the opposite fact,
isolation and separation. The contradiction between town and
country can only exist within the framework of private property. It is
the most crass expression of the subjection of the individual under the
division of labour, under a definite activity forced upon him — a
subjection which makes one man into a restricted town-animal,
another into a restricted country-animal, and daily creates anew the
conflict between their interests. Labour is here again the chief thing,
power over individuals, and as long as this power exists, private
property must exist. The abolition of the contradiction between town
and country is one of the first conditions |42J of communal life, a
condition which again depends on a mass of material premises and
which cannot be fulfilled by the mere will, as anyone can see at the
first glance. (These conditions have still to be set forth.) The
separation of town and country can also be understood as the
separation of capital and landed property, as the beginning of the
existence and development of capital independent of landed
property — the beginning of property having its basis only in labour
and exchange.

In the towns which, in the Middle Ages, did not derive ready-made
from an earlier period but were formed anew by the serfs who had

The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach

become free, the particular labour of each man was his only property
apart from the small capital he brought with him, consisting almost
solely of the most necessary tools of his craft. The competition of
serfs constantly escaping into the town, the constant war of the
country against the towns and thus the necessity of an organised
municipal military force, the bond of common ownership in a
particular kind of labour, the necessity of common buildings for the
sale of their wares at a time when craftsmen were also traders, and
the consequent exclusion of the unauthorised from these buildings,
the conflict among the interests of the various crafts, the necessity of
protecting their laboriously acquired skill, and the feudal organisa-
tion of the whole of the country: these were the causes of the union
of the workers of each craft in guilds. In this context we do not have
to go further into the manifold modifications of the guild-system,
which arise through later historical developments. The flight of the
serfs into the towns went on without interruption right through the
Middle Ages. These serfs, persecuted by their lords in the country,
came separately into the towns, where they found an organised
community, against which they were powerless and in which they
had to subject themselves to the station assigned to them by the
demand for their labour and the interest of their organised urban
competitors. These workers, entering separately, were never able to
attain to any power, since, if their labour was of the guild type which
had to be learned, the guildmasters bent them to their will and
organised them according to their interest; or if their labour was not
such as had to be learned, and therefore not of the guild type, they
were day-labourers, never managed to organise, but remained an
unorganised rabble. The need for day-labourers in the towns created
the rabble.

These towns were true “unions”, 30 called forth by the direct |43|
need of providing for the protection of property, and of multiplying
the means of production and defence of the separate members. The
rabble of these towns was devoid of any power, composed as it was of
individuals strange to one another who had entered separately, and
who stood unorganised over against an organised power, armed for
war, and jealously watching, over them. The journeymen and
apprentices were organised in each craft as it best suited the interest
of the masters. The patriarchal relations existing between them
and their masters gave the latter a double power — on the one hand
because of the direct influence they exerted on the whole life of the
journeymen, and on the other because, for the journeymen who
worked with the same master, it was a real bond which held them
together against the journeymen of other masters and separated

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

them from these. And finally, the journeymen were bound to the
existing order even by their interest in becoming masters themselves.
While, therefore, the rabble at least carried out revolts against the
whole municipal order, revolts which remained completely ineffec-
tive because of its powerlessness, the journeymen never got further
than small acts of insubordination within separate guilds, such as
belong to the very nature of the guild-system. The great risings of
the Middle Ages all radiated from the country, but equally remained
totally ineffective because of the isolation and consequent crudity of
the peasants. 31 —

Capital in these towns was a naturally evolved capital, consisting of
a house, the tools of the craft, and the natural, hereditary customers;
and not being realisable, on account of the backwardness of
intercourse and the lack of circulation, it had to be handed down from
father to son. Unlike modern capital, which can be assessed in money
and which may be indifferently invested in this thing or that, this
capital was directly connected with the particular work of the owner,
inseparable from it and to this extent estate capital. —

In the towns, the division of labour between the [44] individual
guilds was as yet very little developed and, in the guilds themselves,
it did not exist at all between the individual workers. Every workman
had to be versed in a whole round of tasks, had to be able to make
everything that was to be made with his tools. The limited intercourse
and the weak ties between the individual towns, the lack of population
and the narrow needs did not allow of a more advanced division of
labour, and therefore every man who wished to become a master had
to be proficient in the whole of his craft. Medieval craftsmen therefore
had an interest in their special work and in proficiency in it, which was
capable of rising to a limited artistic sense. For this very reason,
however, every medieval craftsman was completely absorbed in his
work, to which he had a complacent servile relationship, and in which
he was involved to a far greater extent than the modern worker, whose
work is a matter of indifference to him. —

[3. FURTHER DIVISION OF LABOUR.
SEPARATION OF COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY.
DIVISION OF LABOUR BETWEEN THE VARIOUS TOWNS.
MANUFACTURE]

The next extension of the division of labour was the separation of
production and intercourse, the formation of a special class of
merchants; a separation which, in the towns bequeathed by a former

The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach

period, had been handed down (among other things with the Jews)
and which very soon appeared in the newly formed ones. With this
there was given the possibility of commercial communications
transcending the immediate neighbourhood, a possibility the
realisation of which depended on the existing means of
communication, the state of public safety in the countryside, which
was determined by political conditions (during the whole of the
Middle Ages, as is well known, the merchants travelled in armed
caravans), and on the cruder or more advanced needs (determined by
the stage of culture attained) of the region accessible to intercourse.

With intercourse vested in a particular class, with the extension of
trade through the merchants beyond the immediate surroundings of
the town, there immediately appears a reciprocal action between
production and intercourse. The towns enter into relations with one
another, new tools are brought from one town into the other, and the
separation between production and intercourse soon calls forth a new
division of production between |45| the individual towns, each of
which is soon exploiting a predominant branch of industry. The local
restrictions of earlier times begin gradually to be broken down. —

It depends purely on the extension of intercourse whether the
productive forces evolved in a locality, especially inventions, are lost
for later development or not. As long as there exists no intercourse
transcending the immediate neighbourhood, every invention must be
made separately in each locality, and mere chances such as irruptions
of barbaric peoples, even ordinary wars, are sufficient to cause a
country with advanced productive forces and needs to have to start
right over again from the beginning. In primitive history every
invention had to be made daily anew and in each locality
independently. That even with a relatively very extensive commerce,
highly developed productive forces are not safe from complete
destruction, is proved by the Phoenicians, whose inventions were for
the most part lost for a long time to come through the ousting of this
nation from commerce, its conquest by Alexander and its consequent
decline. Likewise, for instance, glass staining in the Middle Ages. Only
when intercourse has become world intercourse and has as its basis
large-scale industry, when all nations are drawn into the competitive
struggle, is the permanence of the acquired productive forces
assured. —

The immediate consequence of the division of labour between the
various towns was the rise of manufactures, branches of production
which had outgrown the guild-system. Intercourse with foreign
nations was the historical premise for the first flourishing of
manufactures, in Italy and later in Flanders. In other countries,

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

England and France for example, manufactures were at first confined
to the home market. Besides the premises already mentioned
manufactures presuppose an already advanced concentration of
population, particularly in the countryside, and of capital, which
began to accumulate in the hands of individuals, partly in the guilds in
spite of the guild regulations, partly among the merchants.

1 46) The kind of labour which from the first presupposed
machines, even of the crudest sort, soon showed itself the most
capable of development. Weaving, earlier carried on in the country
by the peasants as a secondary occupatign to procure their clothing,
was the first labour to receive an impetus and a further development
through the extension of intercourse. Weaving was the first
and remained the principal manufacture. The rising demand for
clothing materials, consequent on the growth of population, the
growing accumulation and mobilisation of natural capital through
accelerated circulation, and the demand for luxuries called forth by
this and favoured generally by the gradual extension of inter-
course, gave weaving a quantitative and qualitative stimulus, which
wrenched it out of the form of production hitherto existing.
Alongside the peasants weaving for their own use, who continued,
and still continue, with this sort of work, there emerged a new class
of weavers in the towns, whose fabrics were destined for the whole
home market and usually for foreign markets too.

Weaving, an occupation demanding in most cases little skill and
soon splitting up into countless branches, by its whole nature resisted
the trammels of the guild. Weaving was, therefore, carried on mostly
in villages and market centres, without guild organisation, which
gradually became towns, and indeed the most flourishing towns in
each land.

With guild-free manufacture, property relations also quickly
changed. The first advance beyond naturally derived estate capital
was provided by the rise of merchants, whose capital was from the
beginning movable, capital in the modern sense as far as one can
speak of it, given the circumstances of those times. The second
advance came with manufacture, which again mobilised a mass of
natural capital, and altogether increased the mass of movable capital
as against that of natural capital.

At the same time, manufacture became a refuge of the peasants
from the guilds which excluded them or paid them badly, just as
earlier the guild-towns had served the peasants as a refuge |47| from
the landlords. —

Simultaneously with the beginning of manufactures there was a
period of vagabondage caused by the abolition of the feudal bodies

The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach

of retainers, the disbanding of the armies consisting of a motley
crowd that served the kings against their vassals, the improvement of
agriculture, and the transformation of large strips of tillage into
pasture land. From this alone it is clear that this vagabondage is
strictly connected with the disintegration of the feudal system. As
early as the thirteenth century we find isolated epochs of this kind,
but only at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth
does this vagabondage make a general and permanent appearance.
These vagabonds, who were so numerous that, for instance, Henry
VIII of England had 72,000 of them hanged, 32 were only prevailed
upon to work with the greatest difficulty and through the most
extreme necessity, and then only after long resistance. The rapid rise
of manufactures, particularly in England, absorbed them
gradually. —

With the advent of manufacture the various nations entered into
competitive relations, a commercial struggle, which was fought
out in wars, protective duties and prohibitions, whereas earlier the
nations, insofar as they were connected at all, had carried on an
inoffensive exchange with each other. Trade had from now on a
political significance.

With the advent of manufacture the relations between worker
and employer changed. In the guilds the patriarchal relations
between journeyman and master continued to exist; in manufacture
their place was taken by the monetary relations between worker and
capitalist — relations which in the countryside and in small towns
retained a patriarchal tinge, but in the larger, the real manufacturing
towns, quite early lost almost all patriarchal complexion.

Manufacture and the movement of production in general received
an enormous impetus through the extension of intercourse which
came with the discovery of America and the sea-route to the East
Indies. The new products imported thence, particularly the masses of
gold and silver which came into circulation, had totally changed the
position of the classes towards one another, dealing a hard blow to
feudal landed property and to the workers; the expeditions of
adventurers, colonisation, and above all the extension of markets
into a world market, which had now become possible and was
daily becoming more and more a fact, called forth a new phase 1 48 1 of
historical development, into which in general we need not here enter
further. Through the colonisation of the newly discovered countries
the commercial struggle of the nations against one another was given
new fuel and accordingly greater extension and animosity.

The expansion of commerce and manufacture accelerated the
accumulation of movable capital, while in the guilds, which were not

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

stimulated to extend their production, natural capital remained
stationary or even declined. Commerce and manufacture created the
big bourgeoisie; in the guilds was concentrated the petty bourgeoisie,
which no longer was dominant in the towns as formerly, but had to
bow to the might of the great merchants and manufacturers.* Hence
the decline of the guilds, as soon as they came into contact with
manufacture.

The relations between nations in their intercourse took on two
different forms in the epoch of which we have been speaking. At first
the small quantity of gold and silver in circulation occasioned the ban
on the export of these metals; and industry, made necessary by the
need for employing the growing urban population and for the most
part imported from abroad, could not do without privileges which
could be granted not only, of course, against home competition, but
chiefly against foreign. The local guild privilege was in these original
prohibitions extended over the whole nation. Customs duties
originated from the tributes which the feudal lords exacted from
merchants passing through their territories as protection money
against robbery, tributes later imposed likewise by the towns, and
which, with the rise of the modern states, were the Treasury’s most
obvious means of raising money.

The appearance of American gold and silver on the European
markets, the gradual development of industry, the rapid expansion
of trade and the consequent rise of the non-guild bourgeoisie and
the increasing importance of money, gave these measures another
significance. The state, which was daily less and less able to do
without money, now retained the ban on the export of gold and
silver out of fiscal considerations; the bourgeois, for whom these
quantities of money which were hurled on to the market became the
chief object of speculative buying, were thoroughly content with this;
privileges established earlier became a source of income for the
government and were sold for money; in the customs legislation
there appeared export duties which, since they only hampered
industry, 1 49 j had a purely fiscal aim. —

The second period began in the middle of the seventeenth century
and lasted almost to the end of the eighteenth. Commerce and
navigation had expanded more rapidly than manufacture, which
played a secondary role; the colonies were becoming considerable
consumers; and after long struggles the various nations shared out
the opening world market among themselves. This period begins
with the Navigation Laws 33 and colonial monopolies. The competi-

[Marginal note by Marx:] Petty bourgeoisie — Middle class — Big bourgeoisie.

The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach

tion of the nations among themselves was excluded as far as possible
by tariffs, prohibitions and treaties; and in the last resort the
competitive struggle was carried on and decided by wars (especially
naval wars). The mightiest maritime nation, the English, retained
preponderance in commerce and manufacture. Here, already, we
find concentration in one country.

Manufacture was all the time sheltered by protective duties in the
home market, by monopolies in the colonial market, and abroad as
much as possible by differential duties. The working-up of
home-produced material was encouraged (wool and linen in
England, silk in France), the export of home-produced raw material
forbidden (wool in England), and the [working-upl of imported raw
material neglected or suppressed (cotton in England). The natioii
dominant in maritime trade and colonial power naturally secured for
itself also the greatest quantitative and qualitative expansion of
manufacture. Manufacture could not be carried on without protec-
tion, since, if the slightest change takes place in other countries, it can
lose its market and be ruined; under reasonably favourable
conditions it may easily be introduced into a country, but for this
very reason can easily be destroyed. At the same time through the
mode in which it is carried on, particularly in the eighteenth century
in the countryside, it is to such an extent interwoven with the
conditions of life of a great mass of individuals, that no country dare
jeopardise their existence by permitting free competition. Conse-
quently, insofar as manufacture manages to export, it depends
entirely on the extension or restriction of commerce, and exercises a
relatively very small reaction (on the latter]. Hence its secondary
[role] and the influence of [the merchants] in the eighteenth century.

1 50] It was the merchants and especially the shipowners who more
than anybody else Dressed for state protection and monopolies; the
manufacturers also demanded and indeed received protection, but
all the time were inferior in political importance to the merchants.
The commercial towns, particularlv the maritime towns, became to
some extent civilised and acquired the outlook of the big bourgeoisie,
but in the factory towns an extreme petty-bourgeois outlook
persisted. Cf. Aikin, etc. a The eighteenth century was the century of
trade. Pinto says this expressly: “Le commerce fait la marotte du siecle ,, ; b

a John Aikin, A Description of the Country from Thirty to Forty Miles round
Man Chester. — Ed.

b “Commerce is the rage of the century.” Isaac Pinto, “Lettre sur la jalousie du
commerce” (published in Pinto’s book Traite de la circulation et du credit). — Ed.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

and: “ depuis quelque temps il n’est plus question que de commerce, de
navigation et de marine” 3

The movement of capital, although considerably accelerated, still
remained, however, relatively slow. The splitting-up of the world
market into separate parts, each of which was exploited by a
particular nation, the prevention of competition between the
different nations, the clumsiness of production and the fact that
finance was only evolving from its early stages, greatly impeded
circulation. The consequence of this was a haggling, mean and
niggardly spirit which still clung to all merchants and to the whole
mode of carrying on trade. Compared with the manufacturers, and
above all with the craftsmen, they were certainly big bourgeois;
compared with the merchants and industrialists of the next period
they remain petty bourgeois. Cf. Adam Smith . b —

This period is also characterised by the cessation of the bans on the
export of gold and silver and the beginning of money trade, banks,
national debts, paper money, speculation in stocks and shares,
stockjobbing in all articles and the development of finance in
general. Again capital lost a great part of the natural character which
had still clung to it.

[4. MOST EXTENSIVE DIVISION OF LABOUR.

LARGE-SCALE INDUSTRY]

The concentration of trade and manufacture in one country,
England, developing irresistibly in the seventeenth century, gradual-
ly created for this country a relative world market, and thus a
demand for the manufactured products of this country which could
no longer be met by the industrial productive forces hitherto
existing. This demand, outgrowing the productive forces, was the
motive power which, by producing large-scale industry — the
application of elemental forces to industrial ends, machinery and the
most extensive division of labour — called into existence the third 1 5 1 1
period of private property since the Middle Ages. There already
existed in England the other preconditions of this new phase:
freedom of competition inside the nation, the development of
theoretical mechanics, etc. (indeed, mechanics, perfected by Newton,
was altogether the most popular science in France and England in the
eighteenth century). (Free competition inside the nation itself had

a “For some time now people have been talking only about commerce, navigation
and the navy” (ibid.). — Ed.

b Adam Smith, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. — Ed.

The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach

everywhere to be won by a revolution — 1640 and 1688 in England,
1789 in France.)

Competition soon compelled every country that wished to retain
its historical role to protect its manufactures by renewed customs
regulations (the old duties were no longer any good against
large-scale industry) and soon after to introduce large-scale industry
under protective duties. In spite of these protective measures
large-scale industry universalised competition (it is practical free
trade; the protective duty is only a palliative, a measure of defence
within free trade), established means of communication and the
modern world market, subordinated trade to itself, transformed all
capital into industrial capital, and thus produced the rapid
circulation (development of the financial system) and the centralisa-
tion of capital. By universal competition it forced all individuals to
strain their energy to the utmost. It destroyed as far as possible
ideology, religion, morality, etc., and, where it could not do this,
made them into a palpable lie. It produced world history for the first
time, insofar as it made all civilised nations and every individual
member of them dependent for the satisfaction of their wants on the
whole world, thus destroying the former natural exclusiveness of
separate nations. It made natural science subservient to capital and
took from the division of labour the last semblance of its natural
character. It altogether destroyed the natural character, as far as this
is possible with regard to labour, and resolved all natural relations
into money relations. In the place of naturally grown towns
it created the modern, large industrial cities which have sprung up
overnight. It destroyed the crafts and all earlier stages of industry
wherever it gained mastery. It completed the victory of the town
over the country. Its [basis] is the automatic system. It produced
a mass of productive forces, for which private property became
just as much a fetter [52 j as the guild had been for manufacture and
the small, rural workshop for the developing handicrafts. These
productive forces receive under the system of private property a
one-sided development only, and for the majority they become
destructive forces; moreover, a great many of these forces can find
no application at all within the system of private property. Generally
speaking, large-scale industry created everywhere the same relations
between the classes of society, and thus destroyed the peculiar
features of the various nationalities. And finally, while the
bourgeoisie of each nation still retained separate national interests,
large-scale industry created a class which in all nations has the same
interest and for which nationality is already dead; a class which is
really rid of all the old world and at the same time stands pitted

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

against it. For the worker it makes not only his relation to the
capitalist, but labour itself, unbearable.

It is evident that large-scale industry does not reach the same level
of development in all districts of a country. This does not, however,
retard the class movement of the proletariat, because the proletarians
created by large-scale industry assume leadership of this movement
and carry the whole mass along with them, and because the workers
excluded from large-scale industry are placed by it in a still worse
situation than the workers in large-scale industry itself. The countries
in which large-scale industry is developed act in a similar manner
upon the more or less non-industrial countries, insofar as the latter
are swept by world intercourse into the universal competitive struggle.

* * *

These different forms [of production] are just so many forms of the
organisation of labour, and hence of property. In each period a
unification of the existing productive forces takes place, insofar as this
has been rendered necessary by needs.

[5. THE CONTRADICTION BETWEEN THE PRODUCTIVE FORCES
AND THE FORM OF INTERCOURSE AS THE BASIS
OF SOCIAL REVOLUTION]

The contradiction between the productive forces and the form of
intercourse, which, as we saw, has occurred several times in past
history, without, however, endangering its basis, necessarily on each
occasion burst out in a revolution, taking on at the same time various
subsidiary forms, such as all-embracing collisions, collisions of
various classes, contradictions of consciousness, battle of ideas,
political struggle, etc. From a narrow point of view one may isolate
one of these subsidiary forms and consider it as the basis of these
revolutions; and this is all the more easy as the individuals who
started the revolutions had illusions about their own activity
according to their degree of culture and the stage of historical
development.

Thus all collisions in history have their origin, according to our
view, in the contradiction between the productive forces and the
form 1 53 1 of intercourse. Incidentally, to lead to collisions in a

The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach

country, this contradiction need not necessarily have reached its
extreme limit in that particular country. The competition with
industrially more advanced countries, brought about by the expan-
sion of international intercourse, is sufficient to produce a similar
contradiction in countries with a less advanced industry (e.g., the
latent proletariat in Germany brought into more prominence by the
competition of English industry).

[6. COMPETITION OK INDIVIDUALS
AND THE FORMATION OF CLASSES.

CONTRADICTION BETWEEN INDIVIDUALS AND THEIR CONDITIONS
OF LIFE. THE ILLUSORY COMMUNITY
OF INDIVIDUALS IN BOURGEOIS SOCIETY AND THE REAL UNION
OF INDIVIDUALS UNDER COMMUNISM.

SUBORDINATION OF THE SOCIAL CONDITIONS OF LIFE
TO THE POWER OF THE UNITED INDIVIDUALS]

Competition separates individuals from one another, not only the
bourgeois but still more the workers, in spite of the fact that it brings
them together. Hence it is a long time before these individuals can
unite, apart from the fact that for the purpose of this union — if it is
not to be merely local — the necessary means, the big industrial cities
and cheap and quick communications, have first to be produced by
large-scale industry. Hence every organised power standing over
against these isolated individuals, who live in conditions daily
reproducing this isolation, can only be overcome after long struggles.
To demand the opposite would be tantamount to demanding that
competition should not exist in this definite epoch of history, or that
the individuals should banish from their minds conditions over
which in their isolation they have no control.

The building of houses. With savages each family has as a matter
of course its own cave or hut like the separate family tent of the
nomads. This separate domestic economy is made only the more
necessary by the further development of private property. With the
agricultural peoples a communal domestic economy is just as
impossible as a communal cultivation of the soil. A great advance was
the building of towns. In all previous periods, however, the abolition
[ Aufhebung\ a of individual economy, which is inseparable from the

a Aufhebung — a term used by Hegel to denote the negation of an old form while
preserving its positive content in the new, which supersedes it. — Ed.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

abolition of private property, was impossible for the simple reason
that the material conditions required were not present. The setting
up of a communal domestic economy presupposes the development
of machinery, the use of natural forces and of many other productive
forces — e.g., of water-supplies, 1 54 1 gas-lighting, steam-heating, etc.,
the supersession [ Aufhebung ] of town and country. Without these
conditions a communal economy would not in itself form a new
productive force; it would lack material basis and rest on a purely
theoretical foundation, in other words, it would be a mere freak and
would amount to nothing more than a monastic economy. — What was
possible can be seen in the towns brought into existence by
concentration and in the construction of communal buildings for
various definite purposes {prisons, barracks, etc.). That the
supersession of individual economy is inseparable from the
supersession of the family is self-evident.

(The statement which frequently occurs with Saint Sancho that
each man is all that he is through the state 3 is fundamentally the
same as the statement that the bourgeois is only a specimen of the
bourgeois species; a statement which presupposes that the bourgeois
class existed before the individuals constituting it.*)

In the Middle Ages the citizens in each town were compelled to
unite against the landed nobility to defend themselves. The extension
of trade, the establishment of communications, led separate towns to
establish contacts with other towns, which had asserted the same
interests in the struggle with the same antagonist. Out of the
many local communities of citizens in the various towns there arose
only gradually the middle class. The conditions of life of the individual
citizens became — on account of their contradiction to the existing
relations and of the mode of labour determined by this — conditions
which were common to them all and independent of each individual.
The citizens created these conditions insofar as they had torn
themselves free from feudal ties, and were in their turn created by
them insofar as they were determined by their antagonism to the
feudal system which they found in existence. With the setting up of
intercommunications between the individual towns, these common
conditions developed into class conditions. The same conditions, the
same contradiction, the same interests were bound to call forth on the

* [Marginal note by Marx:] With the philosophers pre-existence of the class.

Max Stirner, Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum. — Ed.

The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach

whole similar customs everywhere. The bourgeoisie itself develops
only gradually together with its conditions, splits according to the
division of labour into various sections and finally absorbs all
propertied classes it finds in existence * (while it develops the majority
of the earlier propertyless and a part of the hitherto propertied classes
into a new class, the proletariat) in the measure to which all property
found in existence is transformed into industrial or commercial
capital.

The separate individuals form a class only insofar as [551 they have
to carry on a common battle against another class; in other respects
they are on hostile terms with each other as competitors. On the
other hand, the class in its turn assumes an independent existence as
against the individuals, so that the latter find their conditions of
life predetermined, and have their position in life and hence
their personal development assigned to them by their class, thus
becoming subsumed under it. This is the same phenomenon as the
subjection of the separate individuals to the division of labour and
can only be removed by the abolition of private property and of
labour* itself. We have already indicated several times that this
subsuming of individuals under the class brings with it their
subjection to all kinds of ideas, etc.

If this development of individuals, which proceeds within the com-
mon conditions of existence of estates and classes, historically follo-
wing one another, and the general conceptions thereby forced upon
them — if this development is considered from a philosophical point of
view, it is certainly verv easy to imagine that in these individuals the
species, or man, has evolved, or that they evolved man — and in this
way one can give history some hard clouts on the ear. One can then
conceive these various estates and classes to be specific terms of the
general expression, subordinate varieties of the species, or evolu-
tionary phases of man.

This subsuming of individuals under definite classes cannot be
abolished until a class has evolved which has no longer any particular
class interest to assert against a ruling ciass.

The transformation, through the division of labour, of personal
powers (relations) into material powers, cannot be dispelled by

* [Marginal note by Marx:] To begin with, it absorbs the branches of labour
directly belonging to the state and then all — [more or less] ideological professions.

a Regarding the meaning of “abolition of labour” f Aufhebung der Arbeit) see this
volume, pp. 52-53, 80, 85-89. — Ed.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

dismissing the general idea of it from one’s mind, but can only be
abolished by the individuals again subjecting these material powers
to themselves and abolishing the division of labour.* This is not
possible without the community. Only within the community has
each individual 1 56 1 the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions;
hence personal freedom becomes possible only within the communi-
ty. In the previous substitutes for the community, in the state,
etc., personal freedom has existed only for the individuals who
developed under the conditions of the ruling class, and only inso-
far as they were individuals of this class. The illusory commu-
nity in which individuals have up till now combined always took
on an independent existence in relation to them, and since it
was the combination of one class over against another, it was at
the same time for the oppressed class not only a completely illu-
sory community, but a new fetter as well. In the real community
the individuals obtain their freedom in and through their asso-
ciation.

Individuals have always proceeded from themselves, but of course
from themselves within their given historical conditions and
relations, not from the “pure” individual in the sense of the ideolo-
gists. But in the course of historical development, and precisely
through the fact that within the division of labour social relations
inevitably take on an independent existence, there appears a cleavage
in the life of each individual, insofar as it is personal and insofar
as it is determined by some branch of labour and the conditions
pertaining to it. (We do not mean it to be understood from this that,
for example, the rentier, the capitalist, etc., cease to be persons; but
their personality is conditioned and determined by quite definite
class relations, and the cleavage appears only in their opposition
to another class and, for themselves, only when they go bankrupt.) In
the estate (and even more in the tribe) this is as yet concealed: for
instance, a nobleman always remains a nobleman, a commoner
always a commoner, a quality inseparable from his individuality
irrespective of his other relations. The difference between the private
individual and the class individual, the accidental nature of the
conditions of life for the individual, appears only with the emergence
of the class, which is itself a product of the bourgeoisie. This accidental
character as such is only engendered and developed |57| by
competition and the struggle of individuals among themselves. Thus,
in imagination, individuals seem freer under the dominance of the

* [Marginal note by Engels:] (Feuerbach: being and essence). [Cf. this volume,
pp. 58-59.]— Ed.

The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach

bourgeoisie than before, because their conditions of life seem
accidental; in reality, of course, they are less free, because they are to a
greater extent governed by material forces. The difference from the
estate comes out particularly in the antagonism between the
bourgeoisie and the proletariat. When the estate of the urban
burghers, the corporations, etc., emerged in opposition to the landed
nobility, their condition of existence — movable property and craft
labour, which had already existed latently before their separation
from the feudal institutions — appeared as something positive, which
was asserted against feudal landed property, and, therefore, in its own
way at first took on a feudal form. Certainly the fugitive serfs treated
their previous servitude as something extraneous to their personality.
But here they only were doing what every class that is freeing itself
from a fetter does; and they did not free themselves as a class but
individually. Moreover, they did not break loose from the system of
estates, but only formed a new estate, retaining their previous
mode of labour even in their new situation, and developing it further
by freeing it from its earlier fetters, which no longer corresponded to
the development alreadv attained.

For the proletarians, on the other hand, the condition of their
life, labour, and with it all the conditions of existence of modern
society, have become something extraneous, something over
which they, as separate individuals, have no control, and over
which no social organisation can give them control. The contra-
diction between the individuality of each separate proletarian and
labour, the condition of life forced upon him, becomes evident to
him, for he is sacrificed from youth onwards and, within his own
class, has no chance of arriving at the conditions which would place
him in the other class. —

1 58 1 NB. It must not be forgotten that the serfs very need of
existing and the impossibility of a large-scale economy involved the
distribution of allotments 3 among the serfs and very soon reduced
the services of the serfs to their lord to an average of payments in
kind and labour-services. This made it possible for the serf to
accumulate movable property and hence facilitated his escape from
his lord and gave him the prospect of making his way as a townsman;
it also created gradations among the serfs, so that the runaway serfs
were already half burghers. It is likewise obvious that the serfs who
were versed in a craft had the best chance of acquiring movable
property. —

3 This word is in English in the manuscript. — Ed.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

Thus, while the fugitive serfs only wished to have full scope to
develop and assert those conditions of existence which were already
there, and hence, in the end, only arrived at free labour, the
proletarians, if they are to assert themselves as individuals, have to
abolish the hitherto prevailing condition of their existence (which
has, moreover, been that of all society up to then), namely, labour.
Thus they find themselves directly opposed to the form in which,
hitherto, the individuals, of which society consists, have given
themselves collective expression, that is, the state; in order,
therefore, to assert themselves as individuals, they must overthrow
the state.

It follows from all we have been saying up till now that* the
communal relation into which the individuals of a class entered,
and which was determined by their common interests as against a
third party, was always a community to which these individuals
belonged only as average individuals, only insofar as they lived
within the conditions of existence of their class — a relation in
which they participated not as individuals but as members of a class.
With the community of revolutionary proletarians, on the other
hand, who take their conditions 1 59 1 of existence and those of all
members of society under their control, it is just the reverse; it is as
individuals that the individuals participate in it. For it is the
association of individuals (assuming the advanced stage of modern
productive forces, of course) which puts the conditions of the free
development and movement of individuals under their con-
trol — conditions which were previously left to chance and had
acquired an independent existence over against the separate
individuals precisely because of their separation as individuals and
because their inevitable association, which was determined by the
division of labour, had, as a result of their separation, become for
them an alien bond. Up till now association (by no means an arbitrary
one, such as is expounded for example in the Contrat social* but a
necessary one) was simply an agreement about those conditions,
within which the individuals were free to en joy the freaks of fortune
(compare, e.g., the formation of the North American state and the
South American republics). This right to the undisturbed enjoyment,

* [The following is crossed out in the manuscript:] the individuals who freed
themselves in any historical epoch merely developed further the conditions of
existence which were already present and which they found in existence.

jean Jacques Rousseau, Du Contrat social. — Ed.

The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach

within certain conditions, of fortuity and chance has up till now been
called personal freedom. — These conditions of existence are, of
course, only the productive forces and forms of intercourse at any
particular time.

Communism differs from all previous movements in that it
overturns the basis of all earlier relations of production and
intercourse, and for the first time consciously treats all naturally
evolved premises as the creations of hitherto existing men, strips
them of their natural character and subjugates them to the power of
the united individuals. Its organisation is, therefore, essentially
economic, the material production of the conditions of this unity; it
turns existing conditions into conditions of unity. The reality which
communism creates is precisely the true basis for rendering it
impossible that anything should exist independently of individuals,
insofar as reality is nevertheless only a product of the preceding
intercourse of individuals. Thus the Communists in practice treat the
conditions created up to now by production and intercourse as
inorganic conditions, without, however, imagining that it was the
plan or the destiny of previous generations to give them material,
and without believing that these conditions were inorganic for the
individuals creating them.

[7. CONTRADICTION BETWEEN INDIVIDUALS
AND THEIR CONDITIONS OF LIFE AS CONTRADICTION
BETWEEN THE PRODUCTIVE FORCES AND THE FORM
OF INTERCOURSE. DEVELOPMENT OF THE PRODUCTIVE FORCES
AND THE CHANGING FORMS OF INTERCOURSE]

[60] The difference between the individual as a person and what-
ever is extraneous to him is not a conceptual difference but a histo-
rical fact. This distinction has a different significance at different
times — e.g., the estate as someting extraneous to the individual in the
eighteenth century, and so too, more or less, the family. It is not a
distinction that we have to make for each age, but one which each
age itself makes from among the different elements which it finds in
existence, and indeed not according to any idea, but compelled by
material collisions in life.

What appears accidental to a later age as opposed to an earlier —
and this applies also to the elements handed down by an earlier
age — is a form of intercourse which corresponded to a definite

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

stage of development of the productive forces. The relation of the
productive forces to the form of intercourse is the relation of the
form of intercourse to the occupation or activity of the indi-
viduals. (The fundamental form of this activity is, of course,
material, on which depend all other forms — mental, political,
religious, etc. The different forms of material life are, of course, in
every case dependent on the needs which are already developed, and
the production, as well as the satisfaction, of these needs is an
historical process, which is not found in the case of a sheep or a dog
(Stirner’s refractory principal argument 3 adversus hominem), al-
though sheep and dogs in their present form certainly, but in spite of
themselves, are products of an historical process). The conditions
under which individual:* have intercourse with each other, so long as
this contradiction is absent, are conditions appertaining to their
individuality, in no way external to them; conditions under which
alone these definite individuals, living under definite relations,
can produce their material life and what is connected with it, are thus
the conditions of their self-activity and are produced by this
self-activity.* The definite condition under which they produce thus
corresponds, as long as (61 J the contradiction has not yet appeared,
to the reality of their conditioned nature, their one-sided existence,
the one-sidedness of which only becomes evident when the
contradiction enters on the scene and thus exists solely for those
who live later. Then this condition appears as an accidental fetter,
and the consciousness that it is a fetter is imputed to the earlier age
as well.

These various conditions, which appear first as conditions of
self-activity, later as fetters upon it, form in the whole development of
history a coherent series of forms of intercourse, the coherence of
which consists in this: an earlier form of intercourse, which has
become a fetter, is replaced by a new- one corresponding to the more
developed productive forces and, hence, to the advanced mode of
the self-activity of individuals — a form which in its turn becomes a
fetter and is then replaced by another. Since these conditions
correspond at every stage to the simultaneous development of the
productive forces, their history is at the same time the history of the
evolving productiv e forces taken over by each new generation, and is
therefore the history of the development of the forces of the
individuals themselves.

* [Marginal note by Marx:] Production of the form of intercourse itself.

a Cf. Max Stirner. “Recensenten Stirners”, and also this volume, pp. 95-96. — Ed.

The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach

Since this development takes place spontaneously, i.e., is not
subordinated to a general plan of freely combined individuals, it
proceeds from various localities, tribes, nations, branches of labour,
etc., each of which to start with develops independently of the others
and only gradually enters into relation with the others. Furthermore,
this development proceeds only very slowly; the various stages and
interests are never completely overcome, but only subordinated to
the prevailing interest and trail along beside the latter for centuries
afterwards. It follows from this that even within a nation the
individuals, even apart from their pecuniary circumstances, have
quite diverse developments, and that an earlier interest, the peculiar
form of intercourse of which has already been ousted by that
belonging to a later interest, remains for a long time afterwards in
possession of a traditional power in the illusory community (state,
law), which has won an existence independent of the individuals; a
power which in the last resort can only be broken by a revolution.
This explains why, with reference to individual points [62] which
allow of a more general summing-up, consciousness can sometimes
appear further advanced than the contemporary empirical condi-
tions, so that in the struggles of a later epoch one can refer to earlier
theoreticians as authorities.

On the other hand, in countries like North America, which start
from scratch in an already advanced historical epoch, the develop-
ment proceeds very rapidly. Such countries have no other natural
premises than the individuals who have settled there and were led to
do so because the forms of intercourse of the old countries did not
correspond to their requirements. Thus they begin with the most
advanced individuals of the old countries, and, therefore, with the
correspondingly most advanced form of intercourse, even before
this form of intercourse has been able to establish itself in the old
countries. This is the case with all colonies, insofar as they are not
mere military or trading stations. Carthage, the Greek colonies, and
Iceland in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, provide examples of
this. A similar relationship issues from conquest, when a form of
intercourse which has evolved on another soil is brought over
complete to the conquered country; whereas in its home it was still
encumbered with interests and relations left over from earlier
periods, here it can and must be established completely and without
hindrance, if only to assure the conquerors’ lasting power. (England
and Naples after the Norman conquest, 34 when they received the
most perfect form of feudal organisation.)

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

[8. THE ROLE OF VIOLENCE (CONQUEST) IN HISTORY]

This whole conception of history appears to be contradicted by
the fact of conquest. Up till now violence, war, pillage, murder and
robbery, etc., have been accepted as the driving force of history.
Here we must limit ourselves to the chief points and take, therefore,
only the most striking example — the destruction of an old civilisation
by a barbarous people and the resulting formation of an entirely new
organisation of society. (Rome and the barbarians; feudalism and
Gaul; the Byzantine Empire and the Turks.)

163] With the conquering barbarian people war itself is still, as
indicated above, 3 a regular form of intercourse, which is the more
eagerly exploited as the increase in population together with the
traditional and, for it, the only possible crude mode of production
gives rise to the need for new means of production. In Italy, on the
other hand, the concentration of landed property (caused not only
by buying-up and indebtedness but also by inheritance, since loose
living being rife and marriage rare, the old families gradually died
out and their possessions fell into the hands of a few) and its
conversion into grazing-land (caused not only by the usual economic
factors still operative today but by the importation of plundered and
tribute corn and the resultant lack of demand for Italian corn)
brought about the almost total disappearance of the free population;
the slaves died out again and again, and had constantly to be
replaced by new ones. Slavery remained the basis of the entire
production process. The plebeians, midway between freemen and
slaves, never succeeded in becoming more than a proletarian rabble.
Rome indeed never became more than a city; its connection with the
provinces was almost exclusively political and could, therefore, easily
be broken again by political events.

Nothing is more common than the notion that in history up till
now it has only been a question of taking. The barbarians take the
Roman Empire, and this fact of taking is made to explain the
transition from the old world to the feudal system. In this taking by
barbarians, however, the question is whether the nation which is
conquered has evolved industrial productive forces, as is the case
with modern peoples, or whether its productive forces are based for

3 Probably a reference to one of the missing pages of the manuscript (see this
volume, p. 63). A similar idea is expressed in the clean copy; see this volume,
p. 34.— Ed.

The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach

the most part merely on their concentration and on the community.
Taking is further determined by the object taken. A banker’s
fortune, consisting of paper, cannot be taken at all without the
taker’s submitting to the conditions of production and intercourse of
the country taken. Similarly the total industrial capital of a modern
industrial country. And finally, everywhere there is very soon an end
to taking, and when there is nothing more to take, you have to set
about producing. From this necessity of producing, which very soon
asserts itself, it follows J64| that the form of community adopted by
the settling conquerors must correspond to the stage of development
of the productive forces they find in existence; or, if this is not the
case from the start, it must change according to the productive
forces. This, too, explains the fact, which people profess to have
noticed everywhere in the period following the migration of the
peoples, namely that the servant was master, and that the conquerors
very soon took over language, culture and manners from the
conquered.

The feudal system was by no means brought complete from
Germany, but had its origin, as far as the conquerors were
concerned, in the martial organisation of the army during the actual
conquest, and this evolved only after the conquest into the feudal
system proper through the action of the productive forces found in
the conquered countries. To what an extent this form was
determined by the productive forces is shown by the abortive
attempts to realise other forms derived from reminiscences of
ancient Rome (Charlemagne, etc.).

To be continued. —

[9. CONTRADICTION BETWEEN THE PRODUCTIVE FORCES
AND THE FORM OF INTERCOURSE UNDER THE CONDITIONS
OF LARGE-SCALE INDUSTRY AND FREE COMPETITION.

CONTRADICTION BETWEEN LABOUR AND CAPITAL]

In large-scale industry and competition the whole mass of
conditions of existence, limitations, biases of individuals, are fused
together into the two simplest forms: private property and labour.
With money every form of intercourse, and intercourse itself,
becomes fortuitous for the individuals. Thus money implies that all
intercourse up till now was only intercourse of individuals under
particular conditions, not of individuals as individuals. These
conditions are reduced to two: accumulated labour or private

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

property, and actual labour. If both or one of these ceases, then
intercourse comes to a standstill. The modern economists themselves,
e.g., Sismondi, Cherbuliez, etc., oppose association des individus
to association des capitaux . a On the other hand, the individuals
themselves are entirely subordinated to the division of labour and
hence are brought into the most complete dependence on one
another. Private property, insofar as within labour it confronts labou r,
evolves out of the necessity of accumulation, and is in the beginning
still mainly a communal form, but in its further development it
approaches more and more the modern form of private property.
The division of labour implies from the outset the division of the
conditionsoi labour, of tools and materials, and thus the fragmentation
of accumulated capital among different owners, and thus, also, the
fragmentation between capital and labour, and the different forms of
property itself. The more the division of labour develops [65] and
accumulation grows, the further fragmentation develops. Labour
itself can only exist on the premise of this fragmentation.

(Personal energy of the individuals of various nations — Germans
and Americans — energy even as a result of miscegenation — hence
the cretinism of the Germans; in France, England, etc,, foreign
peoples transplanted to an already developed soil, in America to an
entirely new soil; in Germany the indigenous population quietly
stayed where it was.)

Thus two facts are here revealed.* First the productive forces
appear as a world for themselves, quite independent of and divorced
from the individuals, alongside the individuals; the reason for this is
that the individuals, whose forces they are, exist split up and in
opposition to one another, whilst, on the other hand, these forces are
only real forces in the intercourse and association of these
individuals. Thus, on the one hand, we have a totality of productive
forces, which have, as it were, taken on a material form and are for
the individuals themselves no longer the forces of the individuals but
of private property, and hence of the individuals only insofar as they
are owners of private property. Never, in any earlier period, have
the productive forces taken on a form so indifferent to the

* [Marginal note by Engels:] Sismondi.

Antoine Elvisee Cherbuliez, Riche ou Pauvre. — Ed.

The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach

intercourse of individuals as individuals, because their intercourse
itself was still a restricted one. On the other hand, standing against
these productive forces, we have the majority of the individuals from
whom these forces have been wrested away, and who, robbed thus of
all real life-content, have become abstract individuals, who are,
however, by this verv fact put into a position to enter into relation
with one another as individuals.

Labour, the only connection which still links them with the
productive forces and with their own existence, has lost all semblance
of self-activity and only sustains their 1 66 1 life by stunting it. While in
the earlier periods self-activity and the production of material life
were separated since they devolved on different persons, and while,
on account of the narrowness of the individuals themselves, the
production of material life was considered a subordinate mode of
self-activity, they now diverge to such an extent that material life
appears as the end, and what produces this material life, labour
(which is now the only possible but, as we see, negative form of
self-activity), as the means.

1 10. THE NECESSITY, PRECONDITIONS AND CONSEQUENCES
OF THE ABOLITION OF PRIVATE PROPERTY]

Thus things have now come to such a pass that the individuals
must appropriate the existing totality of productive forces, not only
to achieve self-activity, but, also, merely to safeguard their very
existence.

This appropriation is first determined by the object to be
appropriated, the productive forces, which have been developed to a
totality and which only exist within a universal intercourse. Even
from this aspect alone, therefore, this appropriation must have a
universal character corresponding to the productive forces and the
intercourse. The appropriation of these forces is itself nothing more
than the development of the individual capacities corresponding to
the material instruments of production. The appropriation of a
totality of instruments of production is, for this very reason, the
development of a totality of capacities in the individuals themselves.

This appropriation is further determined by the persons appro-
priating. Only the proletarians of the present day, who are complete-
ly shut off from all self-activity, are in a position to achieve a com-
plete and no longer restricted self-activity, which consists in the ap-
propriation of a totality of productive forces and in the development
of a totality of capacities entailed by this. All earlier revolutionary

5 — 2086

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

appropriations were restricted; individuals, whose self -activity was
restricted by a crude instrument of production and a limited
intercourse, appropriated this crude instrument |67| of production,
and hence merely achieved a new state of limitation. Their
instrument of production became their property, but they them-
selves remained subordinate to the division of labour and their own
instrument of production. In all appropriations up to now, a mass of
individuals remained subservient to a single instrument of produc-
tion; in the appropriation by the proletarians, a mass of instruments
of production must be made subject to each individual, and property
to all. Modern universal intercourse cannot be controlled by
individuals, unless it is controlled by all.

This appropriation is further determined by the manner in which
it must be effected. It can only be effected through a union, which by
the character of the proletariat itself can again only be a universal
one, and through a revolution, in which, on the one hand, the power
of the earlier mode of production and intercourse and social
organisation is overthrown, and, on the other hand, there develops
the universal character and the energy of the proletariat, which are
required to accomplish the appropriation, and the proletariat
moreover rids itself of everything that still clings to it from its
previous position in society.

Only at this stage does self-activity coincide with material life,
which corresponds to the development of individuals into complete
individuals and the casting-off of all natural limitations. The
transformation of labour into self-activity corresponds to the
transformation of the previously limited intercourse into the
intercourse of individuals as such. With the appropriation of the
total productive forces by the united individuals, private property
comes to an end. Whilst previously in history a particular condition
always appeared as accidental, now the isolation of individuals and
each person’s particular way of gaining his livelihood have them-
selves become accidental.

The individuals, who are no longer 1 68 1 subject to the division of
labour, have been conceived by the philosophers as an ideal, under
the name “man”, and the whole process which we have outlined has
been regarded by them as the evolutionary process of “man”, so that
at every historical stage “man” was substituted for the individuals
existing hitherto and shown as the motive force of history. The
whole process was thus conceived as a process of the self-estrange-
ment [ Selbstentfremdungsprozess ] of “man”,* and this was essentially

[Marginal note by Marx:] Self-estrangement.

The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach

due to the fact that the average individual of the later stage was al-
ways foisted on to the earlier stage, and the consciousness of a later
age on to the individuals of an earlier. Through this inversion, which
from the first disregards the actual conditions, it was possible to
transform the whole of history into an evolutionary process of con-
sciousness.

* * *

Civil society embraces the whole material intercourse of individu-
als within a definite stage of the development of productive forces. It
embraces the whole commercial and industrial life of a given stage
and, insofar, transcends the state and the nation, though, on the
other hand again, it must assert itself in its external relations as
nationality and internally must organise itself as state. The term
“civil society” 35 emerged in the eighteenth century, when property
relations had already extricated themselves from the ancient and
medieval community. Civil society as such only develops with the
bourgeoisie; the social organisation evolving directly out of produc-
tion and intercourse, which in all ages forms the basis of the state and
of the rest of the idealistic 3 superstructure, has, however, always been
designated by the same name.

[11.] THE RELATION OF STATE AND LAW TO PROPERTY

The first form of property, in the ancient world as in the Middle
Ages, is tribal property, determined with the Romans chiefly by war,
with the [69] Germans by the rearing of cattle. In the case of the
ancient peoples, since several tribes live together in one city,
tribal property appears as state property, and the right of the
individual to it as mere “possession” which, however, like tribal
property as a whole, is confined to landed property only. Real
private property began with the ancients, as with modern nations,
with movable property. (Slavery and community) ( dominium ex jure
Quiriturn h ). — In the case of the nations which grew out of the Middle
Ages, tribal property evolved through various stages — feudal landed
property, corporative movable property, capital invested in man-
ufacture — to modern capital, determined by large-scale industry
and universal competition, i.e., pure private property, which has cast

3 I. e., ideal, ideological. — Ed.

b Ownership in accordance with the law applying to full Roman citizens. — Ed.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

off all semblance of a communal institution and has shut out the state
from any influence on the development of property. To this modern
private property corresponds the modern state, which, purchased
gradually by the owners of property by means of taxation, has fallen
entirely into their hands through the national debt, and its existence
has become wholly dependent on the commercial credit which the
owners of property, the bourgeois, extend to it, as reflected in the
rise and fall of government securities on the stock exchange. By the
mere fact that it is a class and no longer an estate, the bourgeoisie
is forced to organise itself no longer locally, but nationally, and
to give a general form to its average interests. Through the
emancipation of private property from the community, the state has
become a separate entity, alongside and outside civil society; but it is
nothing more than the form of organisation which the bourgeois are
compelled to adopt, both for internal and external purposes, for the
mutual guarantee of their property and interests. The independence
of the state is only found nowadays in those countries where the
estates have not vet completely developed into classes, where the
estates, done away with in more advanced countries, still play a part
and there exists a mixture, where consequently no section of the
population can achieve dominance over the others. This is the case
particularly m Germany. The most perfect example of the modern
state is North 1 70 1 America. The modern French, English and
American writers all express the opinion that the state exists only for
the sake of private property, so that this view has also been generally
accepted by the average man.

Since the state is the form in which the individuals of a ruling class
assert their common interests, and in which the whole civil society of
an epoch is epitomised, it follows that all common institutions are set
up with the help of the state and are given a political form. Hence the
illusion that law is based on the will, and indeed on the will divorced
from its real basis — on free will. Similarly, justice is in its turn reduced
to statute law.

Civil law develops simultaneously with private property out of the
disintegration of the natural community. With the Romans the
development of private property and civil law had no further
industrial and commercial consequences, because their whole mode
of production did not alter.* With modern peoples, where the feudal
community was disintegrated by industry and trade, there began
with the rise of private property and civil law a new phase, which was
capable of further development. The very first town which carried

* [?4arginal note by Engels:] (Usury!)

The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach

on an extensive maritime trade in the Middle Ages, Amalfi, also
developed maritime law. 36 As soon as industry and trade developed
private property further, first in Italy and later in other countries,
the highly developed Roman civil law was immediately adopted
again and raised to authority. When later the bourgeoisie had
acquired so much power that the princes took up its interests in
order to overthrow the feudal nobility by means of the bourgeoisie,
there began in all countries — in France in the sixteenth century — the
real development of law, which in all 1 7 1 ] countries except England
proceeded on the basis of the Roman code of laws. In England, too,
Roman legal principles had to be introduced to further the develop-
ment of civil law (especially in the case of movable property). (It must
not be forgotten that law has just as little an independent history as
religion.)

In civil law the existing property relations are declared to be
the result of the general will. The jus utendi et abutendi a itself asserts
on the one hand the fact that private property has become entirely
independent of the community, and on the other the illusion that
private property itself is based solely on the private will, the arbitrary
disposal of the thing. In practice, the abuti has very definite
economic limitations for the owner of private property, if he does
not wish to see his property and hence his jus abutendi pass into other
hands, since actually the thing, considered merely with reference to
his will, is not a thing at all, but only becomes a thing, true property,
in intercourse, and independently of the law (a relationship, which
the philosophers call an idea*). This juridical illusion, which reduces
law to the mere will, necessarily leads, in the further development of
property relations, to the position that a man may have a legal
title to a thing without really having the thing. If, for instance, the
income from a piece of land disappears owing to competition, then
the proprietor has certainly his legal title to it along with the jus utendi
et abutendi. But he can do nothing with it: he owns nothing as a
landed proprietor if he has not enough capital elsewhere to cultivate
his land. This illusion of the jurists also explains the fact that for
them, as for every code, it is altogether fortuitous that individuals
enter into relations among themselves (e.g., contracts); it explains why
they consider that these relations [can] be entered into or not at will,

* [Marginal note by Marx:] For the philosophers relationship —idea. They only know
the relation of “Man” to himself and hence for them all real relations become ideas.

The right of use and of disposal. — Ed.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

1 72 1 and that their content [rests] purely on the individual free will of
the contracting parties.

Whenever, through the development of industry and commerce,
new forms of intercourse have been evolved (e.g., insurance
companies, etc.), the law has always been compelled to admit them
among the modes of acquiring property. 3

[12. FORMS OF SOCIAL CONSCIOUSNESS]

The influence of the division of labour on science.

The role of repression with regard to the state, law, morality, etc.

It is precisely because the bourgeoisie rules as a class that in the law
it must give itself a general expression.

Natural science and history.

There is no history of politics, law, science, etc., of art, religion,
etc.*

Why the ideologists turn everything upside-down.

Clerics, jurists, politicians.

Jurists, politicians (statesmen in general), moralists, clerics.

For this ideological subdivision within a class: 1) The occupation
assumes an independent existence owing to division of labour. Everyone
believes his craft to be the true one. Illusions regarding the
connection between their craft and reality are the more likely to be
cherished by them because of the very nature of the craft. In
consciousness — in jurisprudence, politics, etc. — relations become
concepts; since they do not go beyond these relations, the concepts of
the relations also become fixed concepts in their mind. The judge, for
example, applies the code, he therefore regards legislation as the
real, active driving force. Respect for their goods, because their craft
deals with general matters. ’

Idea of law. Idea of state. The matter is turned upside-down in
ordinary consciousness.

* [Marginal note by Marx:] To the “community” as it appears in the ancient state,
in feudalism and in the absolute monarchy, to this bond correspond especially the
religious conceptions.

3 The following notes, written by Marx, were intended for further elabora-
tion. — Ed.

The German Ideology. I. Feuerbach

Religion is from the outset consciousness of the transcendental arising
from actually existing forces.

This more popularly.

Tradition, with regard to law, religion, etc.

* * *

[73] a Individuals always proceeded, and always proceed, from
themselves. Their relations are the relations of their real life-process.
How does it happen that their relations assume an independent
existence over against them? and that the forces of their own life
become superior to them?

In short: division of labour, the level of which depends on the
development of the productive power at any particular time.

Landed property. Communal property. Feudal. Modern.
Estate property. Manufacturing property. Industrial capital.

a This, the last, page is not numbered in the manuscript. It contains notes relating
to the beginning of the authors’ exposition of the materialist conception of history.
The ideas outlined here are set forth in the clean copy, Section 3 (see this volume,
pp. 32-35). — Ed.

THE LEIPZIG COUNCIL 37

In the third volume of the Wigand’sche Vierteljahrsschrift for 1845
the battle of the Huns, prophetically portrayed by Kaulbach, 38
actually takes place. The spirits of the slain, whose fury is not
appeased even in death, raise a hue and cry, which sounds like the
thunder of battles and war-cries, the clatter of swords, shields and
iron waggons. But it is not a battle over earthly things. The holy war
is being waged not over protective tariffs, the constitution, potato
blight, 39 banking affairs and railways, but in the name of the most
sacred interests of the spirit, in the name of “substance”, “self-
consciousness”, “criticism”, the “unique” and the “true man”. We are
attending a council of church fathers. As these church fathers are
the last specimens of their kind, and as here, it is to be hoped, the
cause of the Most High, alias the Absolute, is being pleaded for the
last time, it is worth while taking a verbatim report of the proceed-
ings.

Here, first of all, is Saint Bruno, who is easily recognised by his stick
(“become sensuousness, become a stick ”, Wigand, p. 130). a His head
is crowned with a halo of “pure criticism” and, full of contempt for the
world, he wraps himself in his “self-consciousness”. He has
“ smashed religion in its entirety and the state in its manifestations”
(p. 138), by violating the concept of “substance” in the name of the
most high self-consciousness. The ruins of the church and “debris”
of the state lie at his feet, while his glance “strikes down” the “mass-
es” into the dust. He is like God, he has neither father nor mother,
he is “his own creation, his own product” (p. 136). In short, he is the
“Napoleon” of the spirit, in spirit he is “Napoleon”. His spiritual
exercises consist in constantly “examining himself, and in this
self-examination he finds the impulse to self-determination”

Bruno Bauer, “Charakterisrik Ludwig Feuerbachs”. — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council

(p. 1 36); as a result of such wearisome self-recording he has obviously
become emaciated. Besides “examining” himself — from time to time
he “examines” also, as we shall see, the Westphalische Dampfboot . a

Opposite him stands Saint Max, whose services to the Kingdom of
God consist in asserting that he has established and proved — on
approximately 600 printed pages b — his identity, that he is not just
anyone, not some “Tom, Dick or Harry”, but precisely Saint Max
and no other. About his halo and other marks of distinction only one
thing can be said: that they are “his object and thereby his property”,
that they are “unique” and “incomparable” and that they are
“inexpressible” (p. 148). c He is simultaneously the “phrase” and the
“owner of the phrase”, simultaneously Sancho Panza and Don
Quixote. His ascetic exercises consist of sour thoughts about
thoughtlessness, of considerations throughout many pages about
inconsiderateness and of the sanctification of unholiness. Incidental-
ly, there is no need for us to elaborate on his virtues, for concerning
all the qualities ascribed to him — even if there were more of them
than the names of God among the Muslims — he is in the habit of
saying: I am all this and something more, I am the all of this nothing
and the nothing of this all. He is favourably distinguished from his
gloomy rival in possessing a certain solemn “ light-heartedness ” and
from time to time he interrupts his serious ponderings with a “critical
hurrah ”.

These two grand masters of the Holy Inquisition summon the
heretic Feuerbach, who has to defend himself against the grave
charge of gnosticism. The heretic Feuerbach, “thunders” Saint
Bruno, is in possession of hyle, d substance, and refuses to hand it over
lest my infinite self-consciousness be reflected in it. Self-conscious-
ness has to wander like a ghost until it has taken back into itself all
things which arise from it and flow into it. It has already swallowed
the whole world, except for this hyle, substance, which the gnostic
Feuerbach keeps under lock and key and refuses to hand over.

Saint Max accuses the gnostic of doubting the dogma revealed by
the mouth of Saint Max himself, the dogma that “every goose, every
dog, every horse” is “the perfect, or, if one prefers the superlative
degree, the most perfect, man”. ( Wigand , p. 187: “The aforesaid
does not lack a tittle of what makes man a man. Indeed, the same
applies also to every goose, every dog, every horse.”)

a See this volume, pp. 112-13. — Ed.
b Max Stirner, Der Einzige und sein Eigenlhum. — Ed.
c See Max Stirner, “Recensenten Stirners”. — Ed.
d Matter, substance. — Ed.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

Besides the hearing of these important indictments, sentence is
also pronounced in the case brought by the two saints against Moses
Hess and in the case brought by Saint Bruno against the authors of
Die heilige Familie. But as these accused have been busying
themselves with “worldly affairs” and, therefore, have failed to
appear before the Santa Casa , 40 they are sentenced in their absence
to eternal banishment from the realm of the spirit for the term of
their natural life.

Finally, the two grand masters are again starting some strange
intrigues among themselves and against each other.*

* [The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:] On the plea that he is
an “unusually cunning and politic mind” ( Wigand, p. 192) Dottore Graziano, alias
Arnold Ruge, appears in the background. [This seems to indicate that originally a
chapter on Ruge was also planned (see Note 7).]

SAINT BRUNO

1. “CAMPAIGN” AGAINST FEUERBACH

Before turning to the solemn discussion which Bauer’s self-
consciousness has with itself and the world, we should reveal one
secret. Saint Bruno uttered the battle-cry and kindled the war only
because he had to “safeguard” himself and his stale, soured criticism
against the ungrateful forgetfulness of the public, only because he
had to show that, in the changed conditions of 1845, criticism always
remained itself and unchanged. He wrote the second volume of the
“good cause and his own cause” 3 : he stands his ground, he fights pro
arts et focis. b In the true theological manner, however, he conceals
this aim of his by an appearance of wishing to “characterise” Feuer-
bach. Poor Bruno was quite forgotten, as was best proved by the
polemic between Feuerbach and Stirner, c in which no notice at all
was taken of him. For just this reason he seized on this polemic in
order to be able to proclaim himself, as the antithesis of the antago-
nists, their higher unity, the Holy Spirit.

Saint Bruno opens his “campaign” with a burst of artillery fire
against Feuerbach, that is to say, with a revised and enlarged reprint
of an article which had already appeared in the Norddeutsche Blatter , d
Feuerbach is made into a knight of “ substance ” in order that Bauer’s
“ self-consciousness ” shall stand out in stronger relief. In this tran-

a Bruno Bauer’s article “Charakteristik Ludwig Feuerbachs” is here ironically
called the second volume of Bauer’s book Die gute. Sache der Freiheit und meine eigene
Angelegenheit (The Good Cause of Freedom and My Own Cause). — Ed.

b Literally: for altars and hearths, used in the sense of: for house and home — that
is, pleading his own cause. — Ed.

c Feuerbach, “Ueber das ‘Wesen des Christenthums’ in Beziehung auf den
‘Einzigen und sein Eigenthum’”. — Ed.

d I. e., Bruno Bauer’s article “Ludwig Feuerbach”. — Ed.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

substantiation of Feuerbach, which is supposed to be proved by
all the writings of the latter, our holy man jumps at once from
Feuerbach’s writings on Leibniz and Bayle 3 to the Wesen des
Christenthums, leaving out the article against the “positive phi-
losophers” 41 in the Hallische Jahrbucher. b This “oversight” is “in
place”. For there Feuerbach revealed the whole wisdom of “self-
consciousness” as against the positive representatives of “sub-
stance”, at a time when Saint Bruno was still indulging in specula-
tion on the immaculate conception.

It is hardly necessary to mention that Saint Bruno still continues to
prance about on his old-Hegelian war horse. Listen to the first
passage in his latest revelations from the Kingdom of God:

“Hegel combined into one Spinoza’s substance and Fichte’s ego; the unity of
both, the combination of these opposing spheres, etc., constitutes the peculiar interest
but, at the same time, the weakness of Hegel’s philosophy. [...] This contradiction in
which Hegel’s system was entangled had to be resolved and destroyed. But he could
only do this by making it impossible for all time to put the question: what is the
relation of self-consciousness to the absolute spirit.... This was possible in two ways. Either
self-consciousness had to be burned again in the flames of substance, i.e., the pure
substantiality relation had to be firmly established and maintained, or it had to be
shown that personality is the creator of its own attributes and essence, that it belongs to
the concept of personality in general to posit itself” (the “concept” or the
“personality”?) “as limited, and again to abolish this limitation which it posits by its
universal essence , for precisely this essence is only the result of its inner self-distinction, of its
activity” ( Wigand, pp. 86, 87, 88). c

In Die heilige Familie (p. 220) d Hegelian philosophy was
represented as a union of Spinoza and Fichte and at the same time the
contradiction involved in this was emphasised. The specific
peculiarity of Saint Bruno is that, unlike the authors of Die heilige
Familie, he does not regard the question of the relation of self-
consciousness to substance as “a point of controversy within
Hegelian speculation”, but as a world-historic, even an absolute
question. This is the sole form in which he is capable of expressing the
conflicts of the present day. He really believes that the triumph of self-
consciousness over substance has a most essential influence not only
on European equilibrium but also on the whole future development
of the Oregon problem. As to the extent to which the abolition of the
Corn Laws in England depends on it, very little has so far transpired , 42

a The reference is to the following works of Feuerbach: Geschichte der neuern
Philosophic. Darstellung, Entwicklung und Kritih der Leibnitz’schen Philosophic and Pierre
Bayle. — Ed.

b Ludwig Feuerbach, “Zur Kritik der ‘positiven Philosophic’ ”. — Ed.
c Bruno Bauer, “Charakteristik Ludwig Feuerbachs”. — Ed.

See present edition, Vol. 4, p. 139. — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. II. Saint Bruno

The abstract and nebulous expression into which a real collision is
distorted by Hegel is held by this “critical” mind to be the real
collision itself. Bruno accepts the speculative contradiction and
upholds one part of it against the other. A philosophical phrase about
a real question is for him the real question itself. Consequently, on
the one hand, instead of real people and their real consciousness of
their social relations, which apparently confront them as something
independent, he has the mere abstract expression: self-consciousness,
just as, instead of real production, he has the activity of this
self-consciousness, which has become independent. On the other hand,
instead of real nature and the actually existing social relations, he has
the philosophical summing-up of all the philosophical categories or
names of these relations in the expression: substance; for Bruno,
along with all philosophers and ideologists, erroneously regards
thoughts and ideas — the independent intellectual expression of the
existing world — as the basis of this existing world. It is obvious that
with these two abstractions, which have become senseless and empty,
he can perform all kinds of tricks without knowing anything at all
about real people and their relations. (See, in addition, what is
said about substance in connection with Feuerbach and concerning
“humane liberalism” 3 and the “holy” in connection with Saint Max.)
Hence, he does not forsake the speculative basis in order to solve the
contradictions of speculation; he manoeuvres while remaining on
that basis, and he himself still stands so much on the specifically
Hegelian basis that the relation of “self-consciousness” to the
“absolute spirit” still gives him no peace. In short, we are confronted
with the philosophy of self-consciousness th at was announced in the Kritik
der Synoptiker , carried out in Das entdeckte Chrislenthum and which,
unfortunately, was long ago anticipated in Hegel’s Phdnornenologie.
This new philosophy of Bauer’s was completely disposed of in Die
heilige Familie on page 220 et seq. and on pages 304-0 7. b Here,
however, Saint Bruno even contrives to caricature himself by
smuggling in “personality”, in order to be able, with Stirner, to
portray the single individual as “his own product”, and Stirner as
Bruno's product. This step forward deserves a brief notice.

First of all, let the reader compare this caricature with the original,
the explanation given of self-consciousness in Das entdeckte Christen-
thum, page 113, and then let him compare this explanation with its
prototype, with Hegel’s Phdnornenologie, pages 575, 583 and so on.
(Both these passages are reproduced in Die heilige Familie, pages

3 See this volume, pp. 40, 54, 232-39, 282-301. — Ed.
b See present edition, Vol. 4, pp. 139 et seq. and 191-93. — Ed.

100

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

221, 223, 224. a ) But now let us turn to the caricature! “Personality in
general”! “Concept”! “Universal essence”! “To posit itself as limited
and again to abolish the limitation”! “Inner self-distinction”! What
tremendous “results”! “Personality in general” is either nonsense
“in general” or the abstract concept of personality. Therefore, it is
part of the “concept” of the concept of personality to “posit itself as
limited”. This limitation, which belongs to the “concept” of its
concept, personality directly afterwards posits “by its universal
essence”. And after it has again abolished this limitation, it turns out
that “precisely this essence” is “the result of its inner self-distinction”.
The entire grandiose result of this intricate tautology amounts,
therefore, to Hegel’s familiar trick of the self-distinction of man in
thought, a self-distinction which the unfortunate Bruno stubbornly
proclaims to be the sole activity of “personality in general”. A fairly
long time ago it was pointed out to Saint Bruno that there is nothing
to be got from a “personality” whose activity is restricted to these, by
now trivial, logical leaps. At the same time the passage quoted
contains the naive admission that the essence of Bauer’s “personali-
ty” is the concept of a concept, the abstraction of an abstraction.

Bruno’s criticism of Feuerbach, insofar as it is new, is restricted to
hypocritically representing Stirner’s reproaches against Feuerbach
and Bauer as Bauer’s reproaches against Feuerbach. Thus, for
example, the assertions that the “essence of man is essence in general
and something holy”, that “man is the God of man”, that the
human species is “the Absolute 1 ’, that Feuerbach splits man “into an
essential and an inessential ego” (although Bruno always declares
that the abstract is the essential and, in his antithesis of criticism and
the mass, conceives this split as far more monstrous than Feuerbach
does), that a struggle must be waged against the “predicates of
God”, etc. On the question of selfish and selfless love, Bruno,
polemising with Feuerbach, copies Stirner almost word for word for
three pages (pp. 133-35) just as he very clumsily copies Stirner’s
phrases: “every man is his own creation”, “truth is a ghost”, and so
on. In addition, in Bruno the “creation” is transformed into a
“product”. We shall return to this exploitation of Stirner by Saint
Bruno.

Thus, the first thing that we discovered in Saint Bruno was his
continual dependence on Hegel. We shall not, of course, dwell
further on the remarks he has copied from Hegel, but shall only put
together a few more passages which show how firmly he believes in
the power of the philosophers and how he shares their illusion that a

a See present edition, Vol. 4, pp. 139-41. — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. II. Saint Bruno

101

modified consciousness, a new turn given to the interpretation of
existing relations, could overturn the whole hitherto existing world.
Imbued with this faith, Saint Bruno also has one of his pupils
certify — in issue IV of Wigand’s quarterly, p. 327 — that his phrases
on personality given above, which were proclaimed by him in
issue III, were “world-shattering ideas”. 3

Saint Bruno says ( Wigand, p. 95) b :

“Philosophy has never been anything but theology reduced to its most general
form and given its most rational expression.”

This passage, aimed against Feuerbach, is copied almost word for
word from Feuerbach’s Philosophie der Zukunft (p. 2):

“Speculative philosophy is true, consistent, rational theology.”

Bruno continues:

“Philosophy, in alliance with religion, has always striven for the absolute
dependence of the individual and has actually achieved this by demanding and causing
the absorption of the individual life in universal life, of the accident in substance, of
man in the absolute spirit.”

As if Bruno’s “philosophy”, “in alliance with” Hegel’s, and his still
continuing forbidden association with theology, did not “demand”,
if not “cause”, the “absorption of man” in the idea of one of his
“accidents”, that of self-consciousness, as “substance”! Moreover,
one sees from this whole passage with what joy the church father
with his “pulpit eloquence” continues to proclaim his “world-
shattering” faith in the mysterious power of the holy theologians
and philosophers. Of course, in the interests of the “good cause of
freedom and his own cause”. c

On page 105 our godfearing man has the insolence to reproach
Feuerbach:

“Feuerbach made of the individual, of the depersonalised man of Christianity, not
a man, not a true” (!) “real” (!!) “personal” (!!!) “man” (these predicates owe their
origin to Die heilige Familie and Stirner), “but an emasculated man, a slave” —

and thereby utters, inter alia, the nonsense that he, Saint Bruno, can
make people by means of the mind.

Further on in the same passage he says:

“According to Feuerbach the individual has to subordinate himself to the species,
serve it. The species of which Feuerbach speaks is Hegel’s Absolute, and it, too, exists
nowhere.”

a “Ueber das Recht des Freigesprochenen...”. — Ed.
b Bruno Bauer, “Charakteristik Ludwig Feuerbachs”. — Ed.

c An ironical allusion to Bauer’s book Die gute Sache der Freiheit und meine eigene
A ngelegenheit. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

Here, as in all the other passages, Saint Bruno does not deprive
himself of the glory of making the actual relations of individuals
dependent on the philosophical interpretation of these relations. He
has not the slightest inkling of the correlation which exists between
the concepts of Hegel’s “absolute spirit” and Feuerbach’s “species”
on the one hand and the existing world on the other.

On page 104 the holy father is mightily shocked by the heresy with
which Feuerbach transforms the holy trinity of reason, love and will
into something that “is in individuals and over individuals”, as
though, in our day, every inclination, every impulse, every need did
not assert itself as a force “in the individual and over the individual”,
whenever circumstances hinder their satisfaction. If the holy father
Bruno experiences hunger, for example, without the means of
appeasing it, then even his stomach will become a force “in him and
over him”. Feuerbach’s mistake is not that he stated this fact but that
in idealistic fashion he endowed it with independence instead of
regarding it as the product of a definite and surmountable stage of
historical development.

Page 111: “Feuerbach is a slave and his servile nature does not allow him to fulfil
the work of a man , to recognise the essence of religion” (what a fine “work of a
man”!).... “He does not perceive the essence of religion because he does not know the
biidge over which he can make his way to the source of religion.”

Saint Bruno still seriously believes that religion has its own “es-
sence”. As for the “bridge”, “ over which ” one makes one’s way to the
“ source of religion”, this asses’ bridge 3 must certainly be an aqueduct.
At the same time Saint Bruno establishes himself as a curiously
modernised Charon who has been retired owing to the building of
the bridge, becoming a tollkeeper b who demands a halfpenny 13 from
every person crossing the bridge to the spectral realm of religion.

On page 120 the saint remarks:

“How could Feuerbach exist if there were no truth and truth were onlv a spectre’’
(Stirner, help! 1 ) “of which hitherto man has been afraid?”

The “man” who fears the “spectre” of “truth” is no other than the
worthy Bruno himself. Ten pages earlier, on p. 1 10, he had already
let out the following world-shattering cry of terror at the sight of the
“spectre” of truth:

a A pun in the original: Eselsbriicke (asses’ bridge) — an expedient used by dull
or lazy people to understand a difficult problem. — Ed.

This word is in English in the manuscript. — Ed.
c A paraphrase of the expression “Samuel, hilf!” (Samuel, help!) from Carl Maria
von Weber’s opera Der Freischutz (libretto by Friedrich Kind), Act II, Scene 6. — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. II. Saint Bruno

103

‘‘Truth which is never of itself encountered as a ready-made object and which
develops itself and reaches unity only in the unfolding of personality.”

Thus, we have here not only truth, this spectre, transformed into a
person which develops itself and reaches unity, but in addition this
trick is accomplished in a third personality outside it, after the
manner of the tapeworm. Concerning the holy man’s former love
affair with truth, when he was still young and the lusts of the flesh
still strong in him — see Die heilige Familie, p. 115 et seq. a

How purified of all fleshly lusts and earthly desires our holy man
now appears is shown by his vehement polemic against Feuerbach’s
sensuousness. Bruno by no means attacks the highly restricted way in
which Feuerbach recognises sensuousness. He regards Feuerbach’s
unsuccessful attempt, since it is an attempt to escape ideology, as — a
sin. Of course! Sensuousness is lust of the eye, lust of the flesh and
arrogance b — horror and abomination c in the eyes of the Lord! Do
you not know that to be fleshlv minded is death, but to be spiritually
minded is life and peace; for to be fleshly minded is hostility to
criticism, and everything of the flesh is of this world. And do you
not know that it is written: the works of the flesh are manifest, they
are adultery, fornication, uncleanness, obscenity, idolatry, witch-
craft, enmity, strife, envy, anger, quarrelsomeness, discord, sinful
gangs, hatred, murder, drunkenness, gluttony and the like. d I pro-
phesy to you, as I prophesied before, that those who do such works
will not inherit the kingdom of criticism; but woe to them for in their
thirst for delights they are following the path of Cain and are falling
into the error of Balaam, and will perish in a rebellion, like that of
Korah. These lewd ones feast shamelessly on your alms, and fatten
themselves. They are clouds without water driven by the wind; bare,
barren trees, twice dead and uprooted; wild ocean waves frothing
their own shame; errant stars condemned to the gloom of darkness
for ever. 4 For we have read that in the last days there will be terrible
times, people will appear who think much of themselves, lewd vilifiers
who love voluptuousness f more than criticism, makers of sinful
gangs, in short, slaves of the flesh. Such people are shunned by Saint
Bruno, who is spiritually minded and loathes the stained covering of
the flesh g and for this reason he condemns Feuerbach, whom he re-

a See present edition, Vol. 4, p. 79 et seq. — Ed.
b Cf. 1 John 2 : 16.— Ed.
c Cf. Ezekiel 11 : 18.— Ed.
d Cf. Galatians 5:19-21. — Ed.
e Cf. Jude 11-13.— Ed.
f Cf. 2 Timothy 3 : 1-4.— Ed.

B Cf. Jude 23.— Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

gards as the Korah of the gang, to remain outside together with the
dogs, the magicians, the debauched and the assassins. 3 “Sensuous-
ness” — ugh! Not only does it throw the saintly church father into the
most violent convulsions, but it even makes him sing, and on page
121 he chants the “song of the end and the end of the song”. Sensu-
ousness — do you know, unfortunate one, what sensuousness is? Sen-
suousness is — a “stick” (p. 130). Seized with convulsions, Saint Bruno
even wrestles on one occasion with one of his own theses, just as Jacob
of blessed memory wrestled with God, with the one difference that
God twisted Jacob’s thigh, while our saintly epileptic twists all the
limbs and ties of his own thesis, and so, by a number of striking
examples, makes clear the identity of subject and object:

“Feuerbach may say what he likes ... all the same he destroys ” (!) “man... for he trans-
forms the word man into a mere phrase ... for he does not wholly make” (!) “ and create ” (!)
“man, but raises the whole of mankind to the Absolute, for in addition he declares not
mankind, but rather the senses to be the organ of the Absolute, and stamps the sensu-
ous — the object of the senses, of perception, of sensation — as the Absolute, the indu-
bitable and the immediately certain. Whereby Feuerbach — such is Saint Bruno’s
opinion — “can undoubtedly shake layers of the air, but he cannot smash the phenomena
of human essence, because his innermost” (!) “essence and his vitalising spirit [...]
already destroys the external” (!) “sound and makes it empty and jarring” (p. 121).

Saint Bruno himself gives us mysterious but decisive disclosures
about the causes of his nonsensical attitude:

“As though my ego does not also possess just this particular sex, un ique, compared
with all others, and these particular, unique sex organs.” (Besides his “unique sex or-
gans”, this noble-minded man also possesses a special “unique sex”!)

This unique sex is explained on page 121 in the sense that:

“sensuousness, like a vampire, sucks all the marrow and blood from the lifeoi man; it
is the insurmountable barrier against which man has to deal himself a mortal blow”.

But even the saintliest man is not pure! They are all sinners and
lack the glory that they should have before “self-consciousness”.
Saint Bruno, who in his lonely cell at midnight struggles with
“substance”, has his attention drawn by the frivolous writings of the
heretic Feuerbach to women and female beauty. Suddenly his sight
becomes less keen; his pure self-consciousness is besmirched, and a
reprehensible, sensuous fantasy plays about the frightened critic
with lascivious images. The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak. b
Bruno stumbles, he falls, he forgets that he is the power that “with its
strength binds, frees and dominates the world ”, c he forgets that
these products of his imagination are “spirit of his spirit”, he loses all

a Cf. Revelation 22:15.— Ed.
b Cf. Matthew 26:41.— Ed.
c Cf. ibid. 16: 19. — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. II. Saint Bruno

105

“self-control” and, intoxicated, stammers a dithyramb to female
beauty, to its “tenderness, softness, womanliness”, to the “full and
rounded limbs” and the “surging, undulating, seething, rushing and
hissing, wave-like structure of the body” 3 of woman. Innocence,
however, always reveals itself — even where it sins. Who does not
know that a “ surging , undulating, wave-like structure of the body”
is something that no eye has ever seen, or ear heard? There-
fore — hush, sweet soul, the spirit will soon prevail over the rebellious
flesh and set an insurmountable “barrier” to the overflowing,
seething lusts, “against which” they will soon deal themselves a
“mortal blow”.

“Feuerbach” — the saint finally arrives at this through a critical understanding of
Die heilige Familie — “is a materialist tempered with and corrupted by humanism, i.e., a
materialist who is unable to endure the earth and its being” (Saint Bruno knows the
being of the earth as distinct from the earth itself, and knows how one should behave
in order to “ endure the being of the earth”!) “but wants to spiritualise himself and rise
into heaven; and at the same time he is a humanist who cannot think and build a
spiritual world, but one who is impregnated with materialism”, and so on (p. 123).

Just as for Saint Bruno humanism, according to this, consists in
“thinking” and in “building a spiritual world”, so materialism
consists in the following:

“The materialist recognises only the existing, actual being, matter" (as though man
with all his attributes, including thought, were not an ‘‘existing, actual being"), “and
recognises it as actively extending and realising itself in multiplicity, nature" (p. 123).

First, matter is an existing, actual being, but only in itself,
concealed; only when it “actively extends and realises itself in mul-
tiplicity” (an “existing, actual being” “realises itself”!!), only then does
it become nature. First there exists the concept of matter, an abstrac-
tion, an idea, and this latter realises itself in actual nature. Word
for word the Hegelian theory of the pre-existence of the creative
categories. From this point of view it is understandable that Saint
Bruno mistakes the philosophical phrases of the materialists con-
cerning matter for the actual kernel and content of their world out-

Io ° k ‘ 2. SAINT BRUNO’S VIEWS ON THE STRUGGLE

BETWEEN FEUERBACH AND STIRNER

Having thus admonished Feuerbach with a few weighty words,
Saint Bruno takes a look at the struggle between Feuerbach and the
unique. The first evidence of his interest in this struggle is a
methodical, triple smile.

a Marx and Engels have inserted the words “seething, rushing and hissing” —
which occur in Schiller’s poem Der Taucher (“The Diver”) — into the passage they
quote from Bruno Bauer’s article “Charakteristik Ludwig Feuerbachs”. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

“The critic pursues his path irresistibly, confident of victory, and victorious. He is
slandered — he smiles. He is called a heretic — he smiles. The old world starts a crusade
against him — he smiles.”

Saint Bruno — this is thus established — -pursues his path but he
does not pursue it like other people, he follows a critical course, he
accomplishes this important action with a smile.

“He does smile his face into more lines than are in the new map, with the
augmentation of the Indies. I know my lady will strike him: if she do, he’ll smile and
take’t for a great art” a — like Shakespeare’s Malvolio.

Saint Bruno himself does not lift a finger to refute his two
opponents, he knows a better way of ridding himself of them, he
leaves them — divide et impera — to their own quarrel. He confronts
Stirner with Feuerbach’s man (p. 124), and Feuerbach with Stirner’s
unique (p. 126 et seq.); he knows that they are as incensed against
each other as the two Kilkenny cats in Ireland, which so completely
devoured each other that finally only their tails remained. 43 And
Saint Bruno passes sentence on these tails, declaring that they are
“ substance ” and, consequently, condemned to eternal damnation.

In confronting Feuerbach with Stirner he repeats what Hegel said
of Spinoza and Fichte, where, as we know, the punctiform ego is
represented as one, and moreover the most stable, aspect of
substance. However much Bruno formerly raged against egoism,
which he even considered the odor specificus of the masses, on page
1 29 he accepts egoism from Stirner — only this should be “not that of
Max Stirner”, but, of course, that of Bruno Bauer. He brands
Stirner’s egoism as having the moral defect “that his ego for the
support of its egoism requites hypocrisy, deception, external
violence”. For the rest, he believes (see p. 124) in the critical miracles
of Saint Max and sees in the latter’s struggle (p. 126) “a real effort to
radically destroy substance”. Instead of dealing with Stirner’s
criticism of Bauer’s “pure criticism”, he asserts on p. 124 that
Stirner’s criticism could affect him just as little as any other, “beca-
use he himself is the critic” .

Finally Saint Bruno refutes both of them, Saint Max and
Feuerbach, applying almost literally to Feuerbach and Stirner the
antithesis drawn by Stirner between the critic Bruno Bauer and the
dogmatist.

Wigand, p. 1 38: “Feuerbach puts himself in opposition to, and thereby ” (!) “ stands in
opposition to, the unique. He is a communist and wants to be one. The unique is an egoist

d Shakespeare, Twelfth Night, Act III, Scene 2. Marx and Engels quote these lines
from the German translation by August Wilhelm von Schlegel. But they have
substituted the word Kunst (art) for the word Gunst (favour). — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. II. Saint Bruno

107

and has to be one; he is the holy one, the other the profane one, he is the good one, the
other the evil one, he is God, the other is man. Both are dogmatists .”

The point is, therefore, that he accuses both of dogmatism.

Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum, p. 194: “The critic is afraid of becoming dogmatic
or of putting forward dogmas. Obviously, he would then become the opposite of a
critic, a dogmatist; he who as a critic was good, would now become evil, or from being
unselfish ” (a Communist) “would become an egoist, etc. Not a single dogma! — that is his
dogma.”

3. SAINT BRUNO VERSUS THE AUTHORS
OF DIE HEILIGE FAMILIE

Saint Bruno, who has disposed of Feuerbach and Stirner in the
manner indicated and who has “cut the unique off from all
progress”, now turns against the apparent “consequences of
Feuerbach”, the German Communists and, especially, the authors of
Die heilige Familie. The expression “real humanism”, which he
found in the preface to this polemic treatise, 3 provides the main basis
of his hypothesis. He will recall a passage from the Bible:

“And I, brethren, could not speak unto you as unto spiritual, but as unto carnal”
(in our case it was just the opposite), “even as unto babes in Christ. I have fed you with
milk, and not with meat: for hitherto ye were not able to bear it” (1 Corinthians,
3:1-2).

The first impression that Die heilige Familie made on the worthy
church father was one of profound distress and serious, respectable
sorrow. The one good side of the book is that it

“showed what Feuerbach had to become, and the position his philosophy can adopt, if
it desires to fight against criticism” (p. 138),

that, consequently, it combined in an easy-going way “desiring” with
“what can be” and “what must be”, but this good side does not out-
weigh its many distressing sides. Feuerbach’s philosophy, which
strangely enough is presupposed here,

“dare not and cannot understand the critic, dare not and cannot know and perceive criti-
cism in its development, dare not and cannot know that, in relation to all that is
transcendental, criticism is a constant struggle and victory, a continual destruction and
creation, the sole ” (!) “creative and productive principle. It dare not and cannot know
how the critic has worked, and still works, to posit and to make” (!) “the transcendental
forces, which up to now have suppressed mankind and not allowed it to breathe and
live, into what they really are, the spirit of the spirit, the innermost of the innermost, a
native thing” (!) “out of and in the native soil, products and creations of
self-consciousness. It dare not and cannot know that the critic and only the critic has
smashed religion in its entirety, and the state in its various manifestations, etc.”
(pp. 138, 139).

See present edition, Vol. 4, p. 7. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

Is this not an exact copy of the ancient Jehovah, who runs after his
errant people who found greater delight in the cheerful pagan gods,
and cries out:

“Hear me, Israel, and close not your ear, Judah! Am I not the Lord your God, who
led you out of the land of Egypt into the land flowing with milk and honey, and
behold, from your earliest youth you have done evil in my sight and angered me with
the work of my hands and turned your back unto me and not your face towards me,
though I invariably tutored you; and you have brought abominations into my house
to defile it, and built the high places of Baal in the valley of the son of Himmon, which
I did not command, and it never entered my head that you should do such
abominations; and I have sent to you my servant Jeremiah, to whom I did address my
word, beginning with the thirteenth year of the reign of King Josiah, son of Amon,
unto this day — and for twenty-three years now he has been zealously preaching to
you, but ye have not harkened. Therefore says the Lord God: Who has ever
heard the like of the virgin of Israel doing such an abomination. For rain water does
not disappear so quickly as my people forgets me. O earth, earth, earth, hear the word
of the Lord!” 3

Thus, in a lengthy speech on “to dare” and “to be able”, Saint
Bruno asserts that his communist opponents have misunderstood
him. The way in which he describes criticism in this recent speech,
the way in which he transforms the former forces that suppressed
“the life of mankind” into “transcendental forces”, and these
transcendental forces into the “spirit of the spirit”, and the way in
which he presents “criticism” as the sole branch of production
proves that the apparent misconception is nothing but a disagreeable
conception. We proved that Bauer’s criticism is beneath all criticism,
owing to which we have inevitably become dogmatists. He even in all
seriousness reproaches us for our insolent disbelief in his ancient
phrases. The whole mythology of independent concepts, with Zeus
the Thunderer — self-consciousness — at the head, is paraded here
once again to the “jingling of hackneyed phrases of a whole janissary
band of current categories”. (Liter atur-Zeitung, cf. Die heilige Familie,
p. 234 b ). First of all, of course, the myth of the creation of the world,
i.e., of the hard “ labour ” of the critic, which is “the sole creative and
productive principle, a constant struggle and victory, a continual de-
struction and creation”, “working” and “having worked”. Indeed,
the reverend father even reproaches Die heilige Familie for under-
standing “criticism” in the same way as he understands it himself in
the present rejoinder. After taking back “substance” “into the land
of its birth, self-consciousness, the criticising and” (since Die heilige

3 Cf. Jeremiah 2 : 6, 32 : 22, 30, 33-35, 25 : 3, 19 : 3, 18 : 13, 14, 22 : 29 .— Ed.
The passage from “Correspondenz aus der Provinz” published in the Allgemeine
Literatur-Zeitung was quoted in The Holy Family (see present edition, Vol. 4, p. 148). —
Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. II. Saint Bruno

109

Familie also) “the criticised man, and discarding it” (self-conscious-
ness here seems to take the place of an ideological lumber-room),
he continues:

“It” (the alleged philosophy of Feuerbach) “dare not know that criticism and the
critics, as long as they have existed” (!)“have guided and made history, that even their
opponents and all the movements and agitations of the present time are their creation,
that it is they alone who hold power in their hands, because strength is in their consciousness,
and because they derive power from themselves, from their deeds, from criticism, from
their opponents, from their creations: that only by the act of criticism is man freed,
and thereby men also, and man is created” (!) “and thereby mankind as well”.

Thus, criticism and the critics are first of all two wholly different
subjects, existing aqd operating apart from each other. The critic is a
subject different from criticism, and criticism is a subject different
from the critic. This personified criticism, criticism as a subject, is
precisely that “critical criticism” against which Die heilige Familie was
directed. “Criticism and the critics, as long as they have existed, have
guided and made history.” It is clear that they could not do so “as
long as they” did not “exist”, and it is equally clear that “as long as
they have existed” they “made history” in their own fashion. Finally,
Saint Bruno goes so far as to “dare and be able” to give us one of the
most profound explanations about the state-shattering power of
criticism, namely, that “criticism and the critics hold power in their
hands, because” (a fine “because”!) “ strength is in their consciousness” ,
and, secondly, that these great manufacturers of history “hold power
in their hands”, because they “derive power from themselves and
from criticism” (i.e., again from themselves) — whereby it is still,
unfortunately, not proven that it is possible to “derive” anything at
all from there, from “themselves”, from “criticism”. On the basis of
criticism’s own words, one should at least believe that it must be
difficult to “derive” from there anything more than the category of
“substance” “discarded” there. Finally, criticism also “derives” “from
criticism” “power” for a highly monstrous oracular dictum. For it
reveals to us a secret that was hidden 3 from our fathers and unknown
to our grandfathers, the secret that “only by the act of criticism is
man created, and thereby mankind as well” — whereas, up to now,
criticism was erroneously regarded as an act of people who existed
prior to it owing to quite different acts. Hence it seems that Saint
Bruno himself came “into the world, from the world, and to the
world” through “criticism”, i.e., by generatio aequivoca. b All this is,
perhaps, merely another interpretation of the following passage

a Cf. Colossians 1 : 26. — Ed.

b Spontaneous generation. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

from the Book of Genesis: And Adam knew, i.e., criticised, Eve his
wife: and she conceived, 3 etc.

Thus we see here the whole familiar critical criticism, which was
already sufficiently characterised in Die heilige Familie, confronting
us again with all its trickery as though nothing had happened. There
is no need to be surprised at this, for the saint himself complains, on
page 140, that Die heilige Familie “cuts criticism off from all
progress”. With the greatest indignation Saint Bruno reproaches the
authors of Die heilige Familie because, by means of a chemical
process, they evaporated Bauer’s criticism from its “fluid” state into a
“ crystalline ” state.

It follows that “institutions of mendicancy”, the “baptismal
certificate of adulthood”, the “regions of pathos and thunder-like
aspects”, the “Mussulman conceptual affliction” (Die heilige Familie,
pp. 2, 3, 4 b according to the critical Literatur-Zeitung ) — all this is
nonsense only if it is understood in the “crystalline” manner. And
the twenty-eight historical howlers of which criticism was proved
guilty in its excursion on “Englische Tagesfragen” c — are they not
errors when looked at from the “fluid” point of view? Does criticism
insist that ; from the fluid point of view, it prophesied a priori the
Nauwerck conflict 44 — long after this had taken place before its
eyes — and did not construct it post festum? d Does it still insist that the
word marechal could mean “farrier” from the “crystalline” point of
view, but from the “fluid” point of view at any rate must mean
“marshal”? Or that although in the “crystalline” conception “ un fait
physique” may mean “a physical fact”, the true “fluid” translation
should be “a fact of physics”? Or that “la malveillance de nos bourgeois
juste-milieux” e in the “fluid” state still means “the carefreeness of our
good burghers”? Does it insist that, from the “fluid” point of view,
“a child that does not, in its turn, become a father or mother is
essentially a daughter ”? That someone can have the task “of
representing, as it were, the last tear of grief shed by the past”? That
the various concierges, lions, grisettes, marquises, scoundrels and
wooden doors in Paris in their “fluid” form are nothing but phases

3 Cf. Genesis 4 : I . — Ed.

The expressions quoted are from Carl Reichardt’s reviews, published in the
Allgerneine Literatur-Zeitung, of the following books: Karl Heinrich Briiggemann,
Preussens Beruf in der deutschen Staats-Entwicklung..., and Daniel Benda, Katechismus fur
ivahlberechtigte Burger in Preussen. They are also quoted in The Holy Family (see present
edition, Vol. 4, p. 10). — Ed.

c An article by Julius Faucher. — Ed.

d An allusion to the article by [E.j J[ungnitz] “Herr Nauwerk und die
philosophische Facultat” published in Allgerneine Literatur-Zeitung. — Ed.

e The ill will of our middle-of-the-road bourgeois. — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. II. Saint Bruno

111

of the mystery “in whose concept in general it belongs to posit itself
as limited and again to abolish this limitation which is posited- by its
universal essence, for precisely this essence is only the result of its
inner self-distinction, its activity” 3 ? That critical criticism in the
“fluid” sense “pursues its path irresistibly, victorious and confident
of victory”, when in dealing with a question it first asserts that it has
revealed its “true and general significance” and then admits that it
“had neither the will nor the right to go beyond criticism”, and
finally admits that “it had still to take one step but that step was
impossible because — it was impossible” (Die heilige Familie, p. 184 b )?
That from the “fluid” point of view “the future is still the work” of
criticism, although “fate may decide as it will” c ? That from the fluid
point of view criticism achieved nothing superhuman when it “came
into contradiction with its true elements — a contradiction which had
already found its solution in these same elements ” d ?

The authors of Die heilige Familie have indeed committed the
frivolity of conceiving these and hundreds of other statements as
statements expressing firm, “crystalline” nonsense — but the synoptic
gospels should be read in a “fluid” way, i.e., according to the sense of
their authors, and on no account in a “crystalline” way, i.e., accord-
ing to their actual nonsense, in order to arrive at true faith and to
admire the harmony of the critical household.

“Engels and Marx, therefore, know only the criticism of the Literatur-Zeitung” e

— a deliberate lie, proving how “fluidly” our saint has read a book
in which his latest works are depicted merely as the culmination of all
the “work he has done”. But the church father lacked the calm to
read in a crystalline way, for he fears his opponents as rivals who
contest his canonisation and “want to deprive him of his sanctity, in
order to make themselves sanctified”.

Let us, incidentally, note the fact that, according to Saint Bruno’s
present statement, his Literatur-Zeitung by no means aimed at
founding “social society” or at “representing, as it were, the last tear
of grief” shed by German ideology, nor did it aim at putting mind in
the sharpest opposition to the mass and developing critical criticism
in all its purity, but only — at “depicting the liberalism and radicalism
of 1 842 and their echoes in their half-heartedness and phrase-mon-
gering”, hence at combating the “echoes” of what has long disap-

a Bruno Bauer, “Charakteristik Ludwig Feuerbachs”. — Ed.
b See present edition, Vol. 4, p. 118. — Ed.
c B. Bauer, “Neueste Schriften fiber die Judenfrage”.— Ed.
d B. Bauer, “Was ist jetzt der Gegenstand der Kritik?” — Ed.
e Bruno Bauer, “Charakteristik Ludwig Feuerbachs”. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

peared. Tant de bruit pour une omelette / a Incidentally, it is just here
that the conception of history peculiar to German theory is again
shown in its “purest” light. The year 1842 is held to be the period of
the greatest brilliance of German liberalism, because at that time
philosophy took part in politics. Liberalism vanishes for the critic
with the cessation of the Deutsche Jahrbiicher and the Rheinische Zei-
tung, the organs of liberal and radical theory. After that, apparently,
there remain only the “echoes” — whereas in actual fact only now,
when the German bourgeoisie feels a real need for political power,
a need produced by economic relations, and is striving to satisfy it,
has liberalism in Germany an actual existence and thereby the
chance of some success.

Saint Bruno’s profound distress over Die heilige Familie did not
allow him to criticise this work “out of himself, through himself and
with himself”. To be able to master his pain he had first to obtain the
work in a “fluid” form. He found this fluid form in a confused
review, teeming with misunderstandings, in the Westphalische
Dampfboot, May issue, pp. 206-14. b All his quotations are taken from
passages quoted in the Westphalische Dampfboot and he quotes
nothing that is not quoted there.

The language of the saintly critic is likewise determined by the
language of the Westphalian critic. In the first place, all the
statements from the Foreword which are quoted by the Westphalian
( Dampfboot , p. 206) are transferred to the Wigand’sche Viertel-
jahrsschrift (pp. 140, 141). This transference forms the chief part of
Bauer’s criticism, according to the old principle already recom-
mended by Hegel:

“To trust common sense and, moreover, in order to keep up with the times and
advance with philosophy, to read reviews of philosophical works, perhaps even their
prefaces and introductory paragraphs; for the latter give the general principles on
which everything turns, while the former give, along with the historical information,
also an appraisal which, because it is an appraisal, even goes beyond Lhat which is
appraised This beaten track can be followed in one’s dressing-gown; but the elevated
feeling of the eternal, the sacred, the infinite, pursues its path in the vestments of a
high priest, a path” which, as we have seen. Saint Bruno also knows how to “pursue”
while “striking down” (Hegel, Phanomenologie, p. 54).

The Westphalian critic, after giving a few quotations from the
- preface, continues:

“Thus the preface itself leads to the battlefield of the book”, etc. (p. 206).

a Much ado about an omelette! An exclamation which Jacques Vallee, Sieur des
Barreaux, is supposed to have made when a thunderstorm occurred while he was
eating an omelette on a fast-day. — Ed.
b See this volume, p. 15. — Ed.

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113

The saintly critic, having transferred these quotations into the
Wigand’sche Vierteljahrsschrift, makes a more subtle distinction and
says:

“Such is the terrain and the enemy which Engels and Marx have created for battle."

From the discussion of the critical proposition: “the worker
creates nothing”, the Westphalian critic gives only the summarising
conclusion.

The saintly critic actually believes that this is all that was said about
the proposition, copies out the Westphalian quotation on page 141
and rejoices at the discovery that only “assertions” have been put
forward in opposition to criticism.

Of the examination of the critical outpourings about love, the
Westphalian critic on page 209 first writes out the corpus delicti in part
and then a few disconnected sentences from the refutation, which he
desires to use as an authority for his nebulous, sickly-sweet
sentimentality.

On pages 141-42 the saintly critic copies him out word for word,
sentence by sentence, in the same order as his predecessor quotes.

The Westphalian critic exclaims over the corpse of Herr Julius
Faucher: “Such is the fate of the beautiful on earth!” 3

The saintly critic cannot finish his “hard work” without ap-
propriating this exclamation to use irrelevantly on page 142.

The Westphalian critic on page 212 gives a would-be summary of
the arguments which are aimed against Saint Bruno himself in Die
heilige Familie.

The saintly critic cheerfully and literally copies out all this stuff
together with all the Westphalian exclamations. He has not the
slightest idea that nowhere in the whole of this polemic discourse does
anyone reproach him for “transforming the problem of political
emancipation into that of human emancipation”, for “wanting to kill
the Jews”, for “transforming the Jews into theologians”, for
“transforming Hegel into Herr Hinrichs”, etc. Credulously, the
saintly critic repeats the Westphalian critic’s allegation that in Die
heilige Familie Marx volunteers to provide some sort of little schola-
stic treatise “in reply to Bauer’s silly self-apotheosis” . Yet the words
“silly self-apotheosis”, which Saint Bruno gives as a quotation, are
nowhere to be found in the whole of Die heilige Familie, but they do
occur with the Westphalian critic. Nor is the little treatise offered as a
reply to the “self -apology” of criticism on pages 150-63 of Die heilige
Familie, but only in the following section on page 165, b in

a Schiller, Wallenstein's Tod, Act IV, Scene 12. — Ed.
b See present edition, Vol. 4, pp. 99-106 and 107. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

connection with the world-historic question: “Why did Herr Bauer
have to engage in politics?”

Finally on page 143 Saint Bruno presents Marx as an “ amusing
comedian ”, here again following his Westphalian model, who
resolved the “world-historic drama of critical criticism”, on page
213, into a “most amusing comedy ”,

Thus one sees how the opponents of critical criticism “dare and
can” “know how the critic has worked, and still works”!

4. OBITUARY FOR “M. HESS”

“What Engels and Marx could not yet do, M. Hess has accomplished.”

Such is the great, divine transition which — owing to the relative
“can” and “cannot” be done of the evangelists — has taken so firm a
hold of the holy man’s fingers that it has to find a place, relevantly or
irrelevantly, in every article of the church father.

“What Engels and Marx could not yet do, M. Hess has
accomplished.” But what is this “what” that “Engels and Marx could
not yet do”? Nothing more nor less, indeed, than — to criticise
Stirner. And why was it that Engels and Marx “could not yet” criticise
Stirner? For the sufficient reason that — Stirner’s book had not yet
appeared when they wrote Die heilige Familie.

This speculative trick — of joining together everything and bring-
ing the most diverse things into an apparent causal relation — has
truly taken possession not only of the head of our saint but also of his
fingers. With him it has become devoid of any contents and
degenerates into a burlesque manner of uttering tautologies with an
important mien. For example, already in the Allgemeine Literatur-
Zeitung (I, 5) we read:

“The difference between my work and the pages which, for example, a Philippson
covers with writing” (that is, the empty pages on which, “for example, a Philippson”
writes) “must, therefore, be so constituted as in fact it is” ! ! ! a

“M. Hess”, for whose writings Engels and Marx take absolutely no
responsibility, seems such a strange phenomenon to the saintly critic
that he is only capable of copying long excerpts from Die letzten
Philosophen and passing the judgment that “on some points this
criticism has not understood Feuerbach or also” (O theology!) “the
vessel wishes to rebel against the potter”. Cf. Epistle to the Romans,
9 : 20-21. Having once more performed the “hard work” of quoting,
our saintly critic finally arrives at the conclusion that Hess copies

a B. Bauer, “Neueste Schriften fiber die Judenfrage”. — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. II. Saint Bruno

115

from Hegel, since he uses the two words “united” and “develop-
ment”. Saint Bruno, of course, had in a round-about way to try to
turn against Feuerbach the proof given in Die heilige Familie of his
own complete dependence on Hegel.

“See, that is how Bauer had to end! He fought as best he could
against all the Hegelian categories”, with the exception of self-
consciousness — particularly in the glorious struggle of the Literatur-
Zeitung against Herr Hinrichs. How he fought and conquered them
we have already seen. For good measure, let us quote Wigand,
page 110, where he asserts that

the “true” (1) “ solution ” (2) “of contradictions ” (3) “in nature and history” (4), the
“ true unity ” (5) “of separate relations” (6), the “genuine” (7) “basis” (8) “and abyss”
(9) “of religion, the truly infinite ” (10), “irresistible, self-creative” (11) “personality”
(12) “has not yet been found”.

These three lines contain not two doubtful Hegelian categories,
as in the case of Hess, but a round dozen of “true, infinite,
irresistible” Hegelian categories which reveal themselves as such by
“the true unity of separate relations” — “see, that is how Bauer had to
end”! And if the holy man thinks that in Hess he has discovered a
Christian believer, not because Hess “hopes” — as Bruno says — but
because he does not hope and because he talks of the “resurrection”,
then our great church father enables us, on the basis of this same
page 110, to demonstrate his very pronounced Judaism. He declares
there

“that the true, living man in the flesh has not yet been bom”!!! (a new elucidation about
the determination of the “unique sex”) “and the mongrel produced” (Bruno Bauer?!?)
“is not yet able to master all dogmatic formulas” , etc.

That is to say, the Messiah is not yet born, the son of man has
first to come into the world and this world, being the world of the
Old Testament, is still under the rod of the law, of “dogmatic
formulas”.

Just as Saint Bruno, as shown above, made use of “Engels and
Marx” for a transition to Hess, so now the latter serves him to bring
Feuerbach finally into causal connection with his excursions on
Stirner, Die heilige Familie and Die letzten Philosophen.

“See, that is how Feuerbach had to end!” “Philosophy had to end piously ”, etc.

( Wigand , p. 145.)

The true causal connection, however, is that this exclamation is
an imitation of a passage from Hess’ Die letzten Philosophen aimed
against Bauer, among others (Preface, p. 4):

“Thus [...] and in no other way had the last offspring of the Christian ascetics [...]
to take farewell of the world.”

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

Saint Bruno ends his speech for the prosecution against Feuerbach
and his alleged accomplices with the reproach to Feuerbach that all
he can do is to “trumpet”, to “blow blasts on a trumpet”, whereas
Monsieur B. Bauer or Madame la critique, the “mongrel produced”,
to say nothing of the continual “destruction”, “ drives forth in his
triumphal chariot and gathers new triumphs ” (p. 125), “hurls down from
the throne” (p. 119), “slays” (p. Ill), “strikes down like thunder”
(p. 115), “destroys once and for all” (p. 120), “shatters” (p. 121),
allows nature merely to “vegetate” (p. 120), builds “stricter” (!)
“prisons” (p. 104) and, finally, with “crushing” pulpit eloquence
expatiates, on p. 105, in a brisk, pious, cheerful and free 3 fashion on
the “stably-strongly-firmly-existing”, hurling “rock-like matter and
rocks” at Feuerbach’s head (p. 1 10) and, in conclusion, by a side
thrust vanquishes Saint Max as well, by adding “the most abstract
abstractness” and “the hardest hardness” (on p. 124) to “critical
criticism”, “social society” and “rock-like matter and rocks”.

All this Saint Bruno accomplished “through himself, in himself
and with himself”, because he is “He himself”; indeed, he is “him-
self always the greatest and can always be the greatest” (is and can
be!) “through himself, in himself and with himself” (p. 136). That’s
that.

Saint Bruno would undoubtedly be dangerous to the female sex,
for he is an “irresistible personality”, if “in the same measure on
the other hand” he did not fear “sensuousness as the barrier
against which man has to deal himself a mortal blow”. Therefore,
“through himself, in himself and with himself” he will hardly pluck
any flowers but rather allow them to wither in infinite longing and
hysterical yearning for the “irresistible personality”, who “possesses
this unique sex and these unique, particular sex organs”.*

* [The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:]

5. Saint Bruno in His “Triumphal Chariot”

Before leaving our church father “victorious and confident of victory”, let us for a
moment mingle with the gaping crowd that comes up running just as eagerly when he
“drives forth in his triumphal chariot and gathers new triumphs” as when General
Tom Thumb with his four ponies provides a diversion. It is not surprising that we
hear the humming of street-songs, for to be welcomed with street-songs “belongs after
all to the concept” of triumph “in general”.

a “Brisk, pious, cheerful and free” (“ frisch , fromm, frohlich und frei ”) — the initial
words of a students’ saying, which were turned by Ludwig Jahn into the motto of the
sport movement he initiated. — Ed.

Ill

SAINT MAX 45

“Was jehen mir die jrinen Beeme an ?” 3

Saint Max exploits, “employs” or “uses” the Council to deliver a
long apologetic commentary on “ the book” , which is none other than
“the book”, the book as such, the book pure and simple, i.e., the
perfect book, the Holy Book, the book as something holy, the book as
the holy of holies, the book in heaven, viz., Der Einzige und sein
Eigenthum. “The book”, as we know, fell from the heavens towards
the end of 1844 and took on the shape of a servant with O. Wigand
in Leipzig. 46 It was, therefore, at the mercy of the vicissitudes of
terrestrial life and was attacked by three “unique ones”, viz., the
mysterious personality of Szeliga, the gnostic Feuerbach and Hess. h
However much at every moment Saint Max as creator towers over
himself as a creation, as he does over his other creations, he
nevertheless took pity on his weakly offspring and, in order to
defend it and ensure its safety, let out a loud “critical hurrah”. In
order to fathom in all their significance both this “critical hurrah”
and Szeligds mysterious personality, we must here, to some extent,
deal with church history and look more closely at “the book”. Or, to
use the language of Saint Max: we “shall episodically put” “into this
passage” a church-historical “meditation” on Der Einzige und sein
Eigenthum “simply because” “it seems to us that it could contribute to
the elucidation of the rest”.

3 “What are the green trees to me?” — a paraphrase (in the Berlin dialect) of a
sentence from Heine’s work Reisebilder, Dritter Teil “Die Bader von Lucca”, Kapitel
IV.— Ed.

b Szeliga, “Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum”; Feuerbach, “Uber das ‘Wesen des
Ch risten thums’ in Beziehung auf den ‘Einzigen und sein Eigenthum’”; Hess,
Die letzten Philosophen. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

“Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the
King of Glory shall come in.

“Who is this King of Glory? The War-Lord strong and mighty, the War-Lord
mighty in battle.

“Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors; and the
King of Glory shall come in.

“Who is this King of Glory? The Lord Unique/ he is the King of Glory,” (Psalms,

24 : 7 - 10 ).

In the Bible “The Lord of Hosts”

Ed.

1. THE UNIQUE AND HIS PROPERTY

The man who “has based his cause on nothing” 3 begins his
lengthy “critical hurrah” like a good German, straightway with a
jeremiad: “Is there anything that is not to be my cause?” (p. 5 of the
“book”). And he continues lamenting heart-rendingly that “every-
thing is to be his cause”, that “God’s cause, the cause of mankind, of
truth and freedom, and in addition the cause of his people, of his
lord”, and thousands of other good causes, are imposed on him.
Poor fellow! The French and English bourgeois complain about lack
of markets, trade crises, panic on the stock exchange, the political
situation prevailing at the moment, etc.; the German petty
bourgeois, whose active participation in the bourgeois movement has
been merely an ideal one, and who for the rest exposed only himself
to risk, sees his own cause simply as the “good cause”, the “cause of
freedom, truth, mankind”, etc.

Our German school-teacher simply believes this illusion of the
German petty bourgeois and on three pages he provisionally
discusses all these good causes.

He investigates “God’s cause”, “the cause of mankind” (pp. 6
and 7) and finds these are “purely egoistical causes”, that both
“God” and “mankind” worry only about what is theirs, that “truth,
freedom, humanity, justice” are “only interested in themselves and
not in us, only in their own well-being and not in ours” — from which

3 Here and below Marx and Engels paraphrase the first lines of Goethe’s poem
Vanitas! Vanitatum vanitas !: “Ich hab’ mein’ Sach’ auf Nichts gestellt.” (“I have
based my cause on nothing.”) “Ich hab’ mein’ Sach’ auf Nichts gestellt” is the heading
of Stirner’s preface to his book. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

he concludes that all these persons “are thereby exceptionally well-
off”. He goes so far as to transform these idealistic phrases — God,
truth, etc. — into prosperous burghers who “are exceptionally well-
off” and enjoy a “ profitable egoism”. But this vexes the holy egoist:
“And I?” he exclaims.

“I, for my part, draw the lesson from this and, instead of continuing to serve
these great egoists, I should rather be an egoist myself!” (p. 7)

Thus we see what holy motives guide Saint Max in his transition
to egoism. It is not the good things of this world, not treasures which
moth and rust corrupt, not the capital belonging to his fellow unique
ones, but heavenly treasure, the capital which belongs to God, truth,
freedom, mankind, etc., that gives him no peace.

If it had not been expected of him that he should serve numerous
good causes, he would never have made the discovery that he also
has his “own” cause, and therefore he would never have based this
cause of his “on nothing” (i.e., the “book”).

If Saint Max had looked a little more closely at these various
“causes” and the “owners” of these causes, e.g., God, mankind,
truth, he would have arrived at the opposite conclusion: that egoism
based on the egoistic mode of action of these persons must be just as
imaginary as these persons themselves.

Instead of this, our saint decides to enter into competition with
“God” and “truth” and to base his cause on himself —

“on myself, on the I that is, just as much as God, the nothing of everything else, the I
that is everything for me, the I that is the unique.... I am nothing in the sense of void,
but the creative nothing, the nothing from which I myself, as creator, create
everything.”

The holy church father could also have expressed this last
proposition as follows: I am everything in the void of nonsense, “6ut”
I am the nugatory creator, the all, from which I myself, as creator,
create nothing.

Which of these two readings is the correct one will become evident
later. So much for the preface.

The “book” itself is divided like the book “of old”, into the Old
and New Testament — namely, into the unique history of man (the
Law and the Prophets) and the inhuman history of the unique (the
Gospel of the Kingdom of God). The former is history in the
framework of logic, the logos confined in the past; the latter is logic
in history, the emancipated logos, which struggles against the
present and triumphantly overcomes it.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

121

THE OLD TESTAMENT: MAN 47
1. The Book of Genesis, i.e., A Man’s Life

Saint Max pretends here that he is writing the biography of his
mortal enemy, “man”, and not of a “ unique ” or “real individual”.
This ties him up in delightful contradictions.

As becomes every normal genesis “a man’s life” begins ab ovo,
with the “child”. As revealed to us on page 13, the child

“from the outset lives a life of struggle against the entire world, it resists everything
and everything resists it”. “Both remain enemies” but “with awe and respect” and
“are constantly on the watch, looking for each other’s weaknesses ” .

This is further amplified, on page 14:

“we”, as children, “try to find out the basis of things or what lies behind them; there-
fore ” (so no longer out of enmity) “we are trying to discover everybody’s weaknesses” .
(Here the finger of Szeliga, the mystery-monger, is evident. 3 )

Thus, the child immediately becomes a metaphysician, trying to
find out the “ basis of things”.

This speculating child, for whom “the nature of things” lies closer
to his heart than his toys, “sometimes” in the long run, succeeds in
coping with the “world of things”, conquers it and then enters a new
phase, the age of youth, when he has to face a new “arduous struggle
of life”, the struggle against reason, for the “ spirit means the first
self-discovery” and: “We are above the world, we are spirit” (p. 15).
The point of view of the youth is a “heavenly one”; the child merely
“learned”, “he did not dwell on purely logical or theological
problems” — just as (the child) “Pilate” hurriedly passed over the
question: “What is truth?” b (p. 17). The youth “tries to master
thoughts”, he “understands ideas, the spirit ” and “seeks ideas”; he
“is engrossed in thought” (p. 16), he has “absolute thoughts, i.e.,
nothing but thoughts, logical thoughts”. The youth who thus “deports
himself”, instead of chasing after young women and other earthly
things, is no other than the young “Stirner”, the studious Berlin
youth, busy with Hegel’s logic and gazing with amazement at the
great Michelet. Of this youth it is rightly said on page 17:

“to bring to light pure thought, to devote oneself to it — in this is the joy of youth, and
all the bright images of the world of thought — truth, freedom, mankind, Man,
etc. — illumine and inspire the youthful soul.”

This youth then “throws aside” the “object” as well and “occupies
himself” exclusively “with his thoughts”;

a An allusion to Szeliga’s article “Eugen Sue: Die Geheimnisse von Paris.
Kritik”. Cf. present edition, Vol. 4, p. 55. — Ed.
b John 18 : 38. — Ed.

6 *

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

“he includes all that is not spiritual under the contemptuous name of external things,
and if, all the same, he does cling to such external things as, for example, students’
customs, etc., it happens only when and because he discovers spirit in them, i.e., when
they become symbols for him’’. (Who will not “discover” “Szeliga” here?)

Virtuous Berlin youth! The beer-drinking ritual of the students’
association was for him only a “symbol” and only for the sake of the
“symbol” was he after a drinking bout many a time found under the
table, where he probably also wished to “discover spirit”! — How
virtuous is this good youth, whom old Ewald, who wrote two volumes
on the “virtuous youth”, 3 could have taken as a model, is seen also
from the fact that it was “made known” to him (p. 15): “Father and
mother should be abandoned, all natural authority should be
considered broken.” For him, “the rational man, the family as a
natural authority does not exist; there follows a renunciation of
parents, brothers and sisters, etc.” — But they are all “re-born as
spiritual, rational authority”, thanks to which the good youth
reconciles obedience and fear of one’s parents with his speculating
conscience, and everything remains as before. Likewise “it is said”
(p. 15): “We ought to obey God rather than men.” b Indeed, the
good youth reaches the highest peak of morality on page 16, where
“it is said”: “One should obey one’s conscience rather than God.”
This moral exultation raises him even above the “revengeful
Eumenides” and even above the “anger of Poseidon” — he is afraid
of nothing so much as his “conscience”.

Having discovered that “the spirit is the essential” he no longer
even fears the following perilous conclusions:

“If, however, the spirit is recognised as the essential, nevertheless it makes a
difference whether the spirit is poor or rich, and therefore” (!) “ one strives to become rich
in spirit; the spirit wishes to expand, to establish its realm, a realm not of this world,
which has just been overcome. In this way, the spirit strives to become all in all” c (what
way is this?), “i.e., although I am spirit, nevertheless I am not perfect spirit and must” (?)
“first seek the perfect spirit” (p. 17).

“Nevertheless it makes a difference.” — “It”, what is this? What is
the “It” that makes the difference? We shall very often come across
this mysterious “It” in our holy man, and it will then turn out that it
is the unique from the standpoint of substance, the beginning of
“unique” logic, and as such the true identity of Hegel’s “being” and
“nothing”. Hence, for everything that this “It” does, says or

a Johann Ludwig Ewald, Der gute Jungling, gute Gatte und Vater, oder Mittel, um es zu
werden. — Ed.

b The Acts of the Apostles 5 : 29. — Ed.
c 1 Corinthians 15:28. — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

123

performs, we shall lay the responsibility on our saint, whose relation
to it is that of its creator. First of all, this “It”, as we have seen, makes
a difference between poor and rich. And why? Because “the spirit is
recognised as the essential”. Poor “It”, which without this recogni-
tion would never have arrived at the difference between poor and
rich! “And therefore one strives”, etc. “ One /” We have here the
second impersonal person which, together with the “It”, is in
Stirner’s service and must perform the heaviest menial work for him.
How these two are accustomed to support each other is clearly seen
here. Since “It” makes a difference whether the spirit is poor or rich,
“one” (could anyone but Stirner’s faithful servant 3 have had this
idea!) — “one, therefore, strives to become rich in spirit”. “It” gives the
signal and immediately “one” joins in at the top of its voice. The
division of labour is classically carried out.

Since “one strives to become rich in spirit, the spirit wishes to
expand, to establish its realm" , etc. “If however” a connection is
present here “it still makes a difference” whether “one” wants to
become “ rich in spirit ” or whether “ the spirit wants to establish its
realm”. Up to now “the spirit" has not wanted anything, “the spirit" has
not yet figured as a person — it was only a matter of the spirit of the
“youth”, and not of “the spirit" as such, of the spirit as subject. But our
holy writer now needs a spirit different from that of the youth, in
order to place it in opposition to the latter as a foreign, and in the last
resort, as a holy spirit. Conjuring trick No. 1.

‘.‘In this way the spirit strives to become all in all”, a somewhat
obscure statement, which is then explained as follows:

“Although I am spirit, nevertheless I am not perfect spirit and must first seek the
perfect spirit . J

But if Saint Max is the “imperfect spirit”, “nevertheless it makes a
difference” whether he has to “ perfect ” his spirit or seek “ the perfect
spirit”. A few lines earlier he was in fact dealing only with the “poor"
and “rich” spirit — a quantitative, profane distinction — and now
there suddenly appears the “imperfect” and “ perfect ” spirit — a
qualitative, mysterious distinction. The striving towards the deve-
lopment of one’s own spirit can now be transformed into the hunt of
the “imperfect spirit” for “ the perfect spirit”. The holy spirit
wanders about like a ghost. Conjuring trick No. 2.

The holy author continues:

“But thereby” (i.e., by the transformation of the striving towards “perfection”
of my spirit into the search for “the perfect spirit”) “I, who have only just found myself

a An ironical allusion to F. Szeliga. See this volume, p. 149. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

as spirit, at once lose myself again, in that I bow down before the perfect spirit, as a
spirit which is not my own, but a spirit of the beyond, and I feel my emptiness ” (p. 18).

This is nothing but a further development of conjuring trick
No. 2. After the “perfect spirit” has been assumed as an existing being
and opposed to the “imperfect spirit”, it becomes obvious that the
“imperfect spirit”, the youth, painfully feels his “emptiness” to the
depths of his soul. Let us go on!

“True, it is all a matter of spirit, but is every spirit the right spirit? The right and
true spirit is the ideal of the spirit, the ‘holy spirit’. It is not my or your spirit but
precisely ” (!) — “an ideal spirit, a spirit of the beyond — ‘God’. ‘God is spirit’” (p. 18).

Here the “perfect spirit” has been suddenly transformed into
the “right” spirit, and immediately afterwards into the “right and
true spirit”. The latter is more closely defined as the “ideal of the
spirit, the holy spirit” and this is proved by the fact that it is “not my
or your spirit but precisely, a spirit of the beyond, an ideal
spirit — God”. The true spirit is the ideal of the spirit, “precisely”
because it is ideall It is the holy spirit “precisely” because it is — God!
What “virtuosity of thought”! We note also in passing that up to now
nothing was said about “your” spirit. Conjuring trick No. 3.

Thus, if I seek to train myself as a mathematician, or, as Saint Max
puts it, to “perfect” myself as a mathematician, then I am seeking the
“perfect” mathematician, i.e., the “right and true” mathematician,
the “ideal” of the mathematician, the “holy” mathematician, who is
distinct from me and you (although in my eyes you may be a perfect
mathematician, just as for the Berlin youth his professor of
philosophy is the perfect spirit); but a mathematician who is
“precisely ideal, of the beyond”, the mathematician in the heavens,
“God”. God is a mathematician.

Saint Max arrives at all these great results because “it makes a
difference whether the spirit is rich or poor”; i.e., in plain language,
it makes a difference whether anyone is rich or poor in spirit, and
because his “youth” has discovered this remarkable fact.

On page 18 Saint Max continues:

“ It divides the man from the youth that the former takes the world as it is”, etc.

Consequently, we do not learn how the youth arrives at the point
where he suddenly takes the world “as it is”, nor do we see our holy
dialectician making the transition from youth to man, we merely
learn that “It” has to perform this service and “ divide ” the youth
from the man. But even this “It” by itself does not suffice to bring
the cumbersome waggonload of unique thoughts into motion. For

John 4 : 24.— Ed.

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after “/l” has “divided the man from the youth”, the man all the
same relapses again into the youth, begins to occupy himself afresh
“exclusively with the spirit” and does not get going until “one”
hurries to his assistance with a change of horses. “Only when one has
grown fond of oneself corporeally, etc.” (p. 18), “only then”
everything goes forward smoothly again, the man discovers that he
has a personal interest, and arrives at “the second self-discovery ” , in
that he not only “finds himself as spirit”, like the youth, “and then at
once loses himself again in the universal spirit”, but finds himself “as
corporeal spirit” (p. 19). This “corporeal spirit” finally arrives at
having an “interest not only in its own spirit” (like the youth), “but in
total satisfaction, in the satisfaction of the whole fellow” (an interest
in the satisfaction of the whole fellow!) — he arrives at the point
where “he is pleased with himself exactly as he is”. Being a German,
Stirner’s “man” arrives at everything very late. He could see,
sauntering along the Paris boulevards or in London’s Regent Street,
hundreds of “young men”, fops and dandies who have not yet found
themselves as “corporeal spirits” and are nevertheless “pleased with
themselves exactly as they are”, and whose main interest lies in the
“satisfaction of the whole fellow!’

This second “self-discovery” fills our holy dialectician with such
enthusiasm that he suddenly forgets his role and begins to speak not
of the man, but of himself, and reveals that he himself, he the unique,
is “the man”, and that “the man” = “the unique”. A new conjuring
trick.

“How I find myself” (it should read: “how the youth finds himself”) “behind the
things, and indeed as spirit, so subsequently, too, I must find myself” (it should read:
“the man must find himself”) “behind the thoughts, i.e., as their creator and owner. In
the period of spirits, thoughts outgrew me” (the youth), “although they were the
offspring of my brain; like delirious fantasies they floated around me and agitated me
greatly, a dreadful power. The thoughts became themselves corporeal, they were
spectres like God, the Emperor, the Pope, the Fatherland, etc.; by destroying their
corporeality, I take them back into my own corporeality and announce : I alone am
corporeal. And now I take the world as it is for me, as my world, as my property: I
relate everything to myself.”

Thus, the man, identified here with the “unique”, having first
given thoughts corporeality, i.e., having transformed them into
spectres, now destroys this corporeality again, by taking them back
into his own body, which he thus makes into a body of spectres. The
fact that he arrives at his own corporeality only through the negation
of the spectres, shows the nature of this constructed corporeality of
the man, which he has first to “announce” to “himself”, in order to
believe in it. But what he “announces to himself” he does not even
“announce” correctly. The fact that apart from his “unique” body

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there are not also to be found in his head all kinds of independent
bodies, spermatozoa, he transforms into the “fable”*: I alone am
corporeal. Another conjuring trick.

Further, the man who, as a youth, stuffed his head with all kinds of
nonsense about existing powers and relations such as the Emperor,
the Fatherland, the State, etc., and knew them only as his own
“delirious fantasies”, in the form of his conceptions — this man,
according to Saint Max, actually destroys all these powers by getting out of
his head his false opinion of them. On the contrary: now that he no
longer looks at the world through the spectacles of his fantasy, he has
to think of the practical interrelations of the world, to get to know
them and to act in accordance with them. By destroying the fantastic
corporeality which the world had for him, he finds its real
corporeality outside his fantasy. With the disappearance of the
spectral corporeality of the Emperor, what disappears for him is not
the corporeality, but the spectral character of the Emperor, the
actual power of whom he can now at last appreciate in all its scope.
Conjuring trick No. 3 [a].

The youth as a man does not even react critically towards ideas
which are valid also for others and are current as categories, but is
critical only of those ideas that are the “mere offspring of his brain”,
i.e., general concepts about existing conditions reproduced in his
brain. Thus, for example, he does not even resolve the category
“Fatherland”, but only his personal opinion of this category, after
which the generally valid category still remains, and even in the
sphere of “philosophical thought” the work is only just beginning.
Fie wants, however, to make us believe that he has destroyed the
category itself because he has destroyed his emotional personal
relation to it — exactly as he has wanted to make us believe that he
has destroyed the power of the Emperor by giving up his fantastic
conception of the Emperor. Conjuring trick No. 4.

“ And now,” continues Saint Max, “I take the world as it is for me, as my world,
as my property.”

He takes the world as it is for him, i.e., as he is compelled to take it,
and thereby he has appropriated the world for himself, has made it his
property — a mode of acquisition which, indeed, is not mentioned by
any of the economists, but the method and success of which will be
the more brilliantly disclosed in “the book”. Basically, however, he
“takes” not the “world”, but only his “delirious fantasy” about the
world as his own, and makes it his property. He takes the world as his

a In German a play on words: Ich sage — I say, I announce and die Sage —
fable, myth, saga. — Ed.

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conception of the world, and the world as his conception is his
imagined property, the property of his .conception, his conception as
property, his property as conception, his own peculiar conception,
or his conception of property; and all this he expresses in the
incomparable phrase: “I relate everything to myself.”

After the man has recognised, as the saint himself admits, that the
world was only populated by spectres, because the youth saw
spectres, after the illusory world of the youth has disappeared for the
man, the latter finds himself in a real world, independent of youthful
fancies.

And so, it should therefore read, I take the world as it is
independently of myself, in the form in which it belongs to itself (“the
man takes” — see page 18 — “the world as it is”, and not as he
would like it to be), in the first place as my non-property (hitherto it
was my property only as a spectre); I relate myself to everything and
only to that extent do I relate everything to myself.

“If I as spirit rejected the world with the deepest contempt for it, then I as
proprietor reject the spectres or ideas into their emptiness. They no longer have
power over me, just as no ‘earthly force’ has power over the spirit” (p. 20).

We see here that the proprietor, Stirner’s man, at once enters
into possession, sine beneficio deliberandi atque inventarii , a of the
inheritance of the youth which, according to his own statement,
consists only of “delirious fantasies” and “spectres”. He believes that
in the process of changing from a child into a youth he had truly
coped with the world of things, and in the process of changing from
a youth into a man he had truly coped with the world of the spirit,
that now, as a man, he has the whole world in his pocket and has
nothing more to trouble him. If, according to the words of the youth
which he repeats, no earthly force outside him has any power over
the spirit, and hence the spirit is the supreme power on earth — and
he, the man, has forced this omnipotent spirit into subjection to
himself — is he not then completely omnipotent? He forgets that he
has only destroyed the fantastic and spectral form assumed by the
idea of “Fatherland”, etc., in the brain of the “youth”, but that he
has still not touched these ideas, insofar as they express actual relations.
Far from having become the master of ideas — he is only now
capable of arriving at “ideas”.

“Now, let us say in conclusion, it can be clearly seen” (p. 199) that
the holy man has brought his interpretation of the different stages of

a Without the advantage of deliberation and inventory — the right of deliberation
and inventory is an old principle of the law of inheritance, which grants the heir time
to decide whether he wants to accept or to reject a legacy. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

life to the desired and predestined goal. He informs us of the result
achieved in a thesis that is a spectral shade which we shall now
confront with its lost body.

Unique thesis, p. 20.

“The child was realistic, in thrall to the
things of this world, until little by little he
succeeded in penetrating behind these very
things. The youth was idealistic, inspired
by thoughts, until he worked his way up
to become a man, the egoistic man, who
deals with things and thoughts as he
pleases and puts his personal interest
above everything. Finally, the old man?
It will be time enough to speak of this
when I become one.”

Owner of the accompanying liberated
shade.

The child was actually in thrall to the
world of his things, until little by little (a bor-
rowed conjuring trick standing for de-
velopment) he succeeded in leaving these
very things behind him. The youth was
fanciful and was made thoughtless by his
enthusiasm, until he was brought down
by the man, the egoistic burgher, with
whom things and thoughts deal as they
please, because his personal interest puts
everything above him. Finally, the old
man? — “Woman, what have I to do with
thee?” a

The entire history of “a man’s life” amounts, therefore, “let us
say in conclusion”, to the following:

1. Stirner regards the various stages of life only as “self-discov-
eries” of the individual, and these “self-discoveries” are moreover
always reduced to a definite relation of consciousness. Thus the
variety of consciousness is here the life of the individual. The physical
and social changes which take place in the individuals and produce
an altered consciousness are, of course, of no concern to Stirner. In
Stirner’s work, therefore, child, youth and man always find the world
ready-made, just as they merely “find” “themselves”; absolutely
nothing is done to ensure that there should be something which can
in fact be found. But even the relation of consciousness is not correctly
understood either, but only in its speculative distortion. Hence, too,
all these figures have a philosophical attitude to the world — “the
child is realistic ”, “the youth is idealistic ”, the man is the negative
unity of the two, absolute negativity, as is evident from the
above-quoted final proposition. Here the secret of “a man’s life”
is revealed, here it becomes clear that the “child” was only a
disguise of “realism”, the “youth” a disguise of “idealism”, the “man”
of an attempted solution of this philosophical antithesis. This solution,
this “absolute negativity” , is arrived at — it is now seen — only thanks
to the man blindly taking on trust the illusions both of the child and

John 2 : 4. — Ed.

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of the youth, believing thus to have overcome the world of things and
the world of the spirit.

2. Since Saint Max pays no attention to the physical and social
“life” of the individual, and says nothing at all about “life”, he quite
consistently abstracts from historical epochs, nationalities, classes,
etc., or, which is the same thing, he inflates the consciousness
predominant in the class nearest to him in his immediate environ-
ment into the normal consciousness of “a man’s life”. In order to rise
above this local and pedantic narrow-mindedness he has only to
confront “his” youth with the first young clerk he encounters, a
young English factory worker or young Yankee, not to mention the
young Kirghiz-Kazakhs.

3. Our saint’s enormous gullibility — the true spirit of his
book — is not content with causing his youth to believe in his child,
and his man to believe in his youth. The illusions which some
“youths”, “men”, etc., have or claim to have about themselves, are
without any examination accepted by Stirner himself and confused
with the “ life ”, with the reality, of these highly ambiguous youths and
men.

4. The prototype of the entire structure of the stages of life has
already been depicted in the third part of Hegel’s Encyclopddie a and
“in various transformations” in other passages in Hegel as well. Saint
Max, pursuing “his own” purposes, had, of course, to undertake
certain “transformations” here also. Whereas Hegel, for example, is
still to such an extent guided by the empirical world that he portrays
the German burgher as the servant of the world around him, Stirner
has to make him the master of this world, which he is not even in
imagination. Similarly, Saint Max pretends that he does not speak of
the old man for empirical reasons; he wishes to wait until he becomes
one himself (here, therefore, “a man’s life” = his unique life). Hegel
briskly sets about constructing the four stages of the human life
because, in the real world, the negation is posited twice, i.e., as moon
and as comet (cf. Hegel’s Naturphilosophie b ), and therefore the
quaternity here takes the place of the trinity. Stirner finds his own
uniqueness in making moon and comet coincide and so abolishes the
unfortunate old man from “a man’s life”. The reason for this
conjuring trick becomes evident as soon as we examine the
construction of the unique history of man.

a G. W. F. Hegel, Encyclopddie der philosophischen Wissenschaften im Grundrisse.
C. Die Philosophic des Geistes. — Ed.

b G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen iiber die Naturphilosophie. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

2. The Economy of the Old Testament

We must here, for a moment, jump from the “Law” to the
“Prophets”, since at this point already we reveal the secret of unique
domestic economy in heaven and on earth. In the Old Testament,
too — where the law, man, still is a school-master of the unique
(Galatians 3:24) — the history of the kingdom of the unique follows
a wise plan fixed from eternity. Everything has been foreseen
and preordained in order that the unique could appear in the
world, when the time had come 3 to redeem holy people from their
holiness.

The first book, “A Man’s Life”, is also called the “Book of
Genesis”, because it contains in embryo the entire domestic economy
of the unique, because it gives us a prototype of the whole
subsequent development up to the moment when the time comes for
the end of the world. The entire unique history revolves round
three stages: child, youth and man, who return “in various
transformations” and in ever widening circles until, finally, the
entire history of the world of things and the world of the spirit is
reduced to “child, youth and man”. Everywhere we shall find
nothing but disguised “child, youth and man”, just as we already
discovered in them three disguised categories.

We spoke above of the German philosophical conception of
history. Here, in Saint Max, we find a brilliant example of it. The
speculative idea, the abstract conception, is made the driving force of
history, and history is thereby turned into the mere history of
philosophy. But even the latter is not conceived as, according to
existing sources, it actually took place — not to mention how it
evolved under the influence of real historical relations — but as it was
understood and described by recent German philosophers, in
particular Hegel and Feuerbach. And from these descriptions again
only that was selected which could be adapted to the given end, and
which came into the hands of our saint by tradition. Thus, history
becomes a mere history of illusory ideas, a history of spirits and
ghosts, while the real, empirical history that forms the basis of this
ghostly history is only utilised to provide bodies for these ghosts;
from it are borrowed the names required to clothe these ghosts
with the appearance of reality. In making this experiment our
saint frequently forgets his role and writes an undisguised ghost-
story.

In his case we find this method of making history in its most naive,
most classic simplicity. Three simple categories — realism, idealism

Galatians 4 : 4. — Ed.

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and absolute negativity (here named “egoism”) as the unity of the
two— which we have already encountered in the shape of the child,
youth and man, are made the basis of all history and are embellished
with various historical signboards; together with their modest suite
of auxiliary categories they form the content of all the allegedly
historical phases which are trotted out. Saint Max once again reveals
here his boundless faith by pushing to greater extremes than any of
his predecessors faith in the speculative content of history dished up
by German philosophers. In this solemn and tedious construction of
history, therefore, all that matters is to find a pompous series
of resounding names for three categories that are so hackneyed
that they no longer dare to show themselves publicly under their
own names. Our anointed author could perfectly well have
passed from the “man” (p. 20) immediately to the “ego” (p. 201) or
better still to the “unique” (p. 485); but that would have been
too simple. Moreover, the strong competition among the Ger-
man speculative philosophers makes it the duty of each new com-
petitor to offer an ear-splitting historical advertisement for his
commodity.

“The force of true development”, to use Dottore Graziano’s words,
“proceeds most forcibly” in the following “transformations”:

Basis:

I. Realism.

II. Idealism.

III. The negative unity of the two. “One” (p. 485),

First nomenclature:

I. Child, dependent on things (realism).

II. Youth, dependent on ideas (idealism).

III. Man — (as the negative unity)

expressed positively:

the owner of ideas and things
expressed negatively:

free from ideas and things
Second , historical nomenclature:

I. Negro (realism, child).

II. Mongol (idealism, youth).

III. Caucasian (negative unity of realism and idealism, man).
Third, most general nomenclature:

I. Realistic egoist (egoist in the ordinary sense) — child, Negro.

II. Idealist egoist (devotee) — youth, Mongol.

III. True egoist (the unique) — man, Caucasian.

Fourth, historical nomenclature. Repetition of the preceding stages
within the category of the Caucasian.

► (egoism)

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

I. The Ancients. Negroid Caucasians — childish men — pagans —
dependent on things — realists — the world.

Transition (child penetrating behind the “things of this world”):
Sophists, Sceptics, etc.

II. The Modems. Mongoloid Caucasians — youthful men — Chris-
tians — dependent on ideas — idealists — spirit.

1 . Pure history of spirits, 3 Christianity as spirit. “The spirit.”

2. Impure history of spirits. Spirit in relation to others. “The
Possessed”.

A. Purely impure history of spirits.

a) The apparition, the ghost, the spirit in the Negroid
state, as thing-like spirit and spiritual thing — objec-
tive being for the Christian, spirit as child.

b) The whimsy, the fixed idea, the spirit in the Mongolian
condition, as spiritual in the spirit, determination
in consciousness, conceptual being in the Christian —
spirit as youth.

B. Impurely impure (historical) history of spirits.

a) Catholicism — Middle Ages (the Negro, child, real-

ism, etc.).

b) Protestantism — modern times in modern times —
(Mongol, youth, idealism, etc.).

Within Protestantism it is possible to make further
subdivisions, for example:

a) English philosophy — realism, child, Negro.

[3) German philosophy — idealism, youth, Mongol.

3. The Hierarchy — negative unity of the two within the Mon-
goloid-Caucasian point of view. Such unity appears where
historical relations are changed into actually existing rela-
tions or where opposites are presented as existing side
by side. Here, therefore, we have two co-existing stages:

A. The “ uneducated ,b (evil ones, bourgeois, egoists in the
ordinary sense) = Negroes, children, Catholics, realists,
etc.

B. The “ educated ’ (good ones, citoyens, devotees, priests,
etc.) = Mongols, youths, Protestants, idealists.

a In the German original Geistergeschichte, that is, “ghost-story” ( Geister — ghosts
or spirits; Geschichte — story or history). In this volume, however, it has usually been
rendered as “history of spirits” to bring out more clearly the connection with the
words that precede or follow it. — Ed.

Here and later the authors ironically use Berlin dialect words for uneducated
( Unjebildete ) and educated (Jebildete ). — Ed.

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These two stages exist side by side and hence it follows
“easily” that the “educated” rule over the “uneducated” — this
is the hierarchy. In the further course of historical development
there arises then

the non-Hegelian from the “uneducated”,
the Hegelian from the “educated”,*
from which it follows that the Hegelians rule over the non-
Hegelians. In this way Stirner converts the speculative notion
of the domination of the speculative idea in history into the
notion of the domination of the speculative philosophers
themselves. The view of history hitherto held by him — the
domination of the idea — becomes in the hierarchy a relation
actually existing at present; it becomes the world domination of
ideologists. This shows how deeply Stirner has plunged into
speculation. This domination of the speculative philosophers
and ideologists is finally developing, “for the time has come”
for it, into the following, concluding nomenclature:

a) Political liberalism, dependent on things, independent of
persons — realism, child, Negro, the ancient, apparition,
Catholicism, the “uneducated”, masterless.

b) Social liberalism, independent of things, dependent on the
spirit, without object — idealism, youth, Mongol, the mod-
ern, whimsy, Protestantism, the “educated”, propertyless.

c) Humane liberalism, masterless and propertyless, that is
godless, for God is simultaneously the supreme master and
the supreme possession, hierarchy — negative unity in the
sphere of liberalism and, as such, domination over the
world of things and thoughts; at the same time the perfect
egoist in the abolition of egoism — the perfect hierarchy. At
the same time, it forms the

Transition (youth penetrating behind the world of thoughts) to

III. the ‘ "ego” — i.e., the perfect Christian, the perfect man, the
Caucasian Caucasian and true egoist, who — -just as the
Christian became spirit through the supersession of the
ancient world — becomes a corporeal being 3 through the
dissolution of the realm of spirits, by entering, sine beneficio
deliberandi et inventarii, into the inheritance of idealism, the

* “The shaman and the speculative philosopher denote the lowest and the highest
point in the scale of the inner man, the Mongol” (p. 453).

a In German a pun on der Leibhaftige, which can mean corporeal being or the
devil. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

youth, the Mongol, the modern, the Christian, the possessed,
the whimsical, the Protestant, the “educated”, the Hegelian
and the humane liberal.

NB. 1. “At times” Feuerbachian and other categories, such as
reason, the heart, etc., may be also “included episodically”, should a
suitable occasion arise, to heighten the colour of the picture and to
produce new effects. It goes without saying that these, too, are only
new disguises of the ever present idealism and realism.

2. The very pious Saint Max, Jacques le bonhomme, has nothing
real and mundane to say about real mundane history, except that
under the name of “nature”, the “world of things”, the “world of
the child”, etc., he always opposes it to consciousness, as an object of
speculation of the latter, as a world which, in spite of its continual
annihilation, continues to exist in a mystical darkness, in order to
reappear on every convenient occasion — probably because children
and Negroes continue to exist, and hence also their world, the
so-called world of things, “easily” continues to exist. Concerning
such historical and non-historical constructions, good old Hegel
wrote with regard to Schelling — the model for all constructors — that
one can say the following in this context:

“It is no more difficult to handle the instrument of this monotonous formalism
than a painter’s palette which has only two colours, say black” (realistic, childish,
Negroid, etc.) “and yellow” 3 (idealist, youthful, Mongolian, etc.), “in order to use the
former to paint a surface when something historical” (the “world of things”) “is
required, and the latter when a landscape” (“heaven”, spirit, holiness, etc.) “is
needed” ( Phanomenologie , p. 39).

“Ordinary consciousness” has even more pointedly ridiculed
constructions of this kind in the following song:

The master sent out John

And told him to cut the hay;

But John did not cut the hay
Nor did he come back home.

Then the master sent out the dog
And told him to bite John;

But the dog did not bite John,

John did not cut the hay

And they did not come back home.

Then the master sent out the stick
And told it to beat the dog;

But the stick did not beat the dog,

The dog did not bite John,

John did not cut the hay

And they did not come back home.

a Hegel mentions red and green as examples. — Ed.

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Then the master sent out fire
And told it to burn the stick;

But the fire did not burn the stick,

The stick did not beat the dog,

The dog did not bite John,

John did not cut the hay

And they did not come back home.

Then the master sent out water
And told it to put out the fire;

But the water did not put out the fire,
The fire did not burn the stick.

The stick did not beat the dog,

The dog did not bite John,

John did not cut the hay

And they did not come back home.

Then the master sent out the ox
And told it to drink the water;

But the ox did not drink the water,

The water did not put out the fire,

The fire did not burn the stick.

The stick did not beat the dog,

The dog did not bite John,

John did not cut the hay

And they did not come back home.

Then the master sent out the butcher
And told him to slaughter the ox;

But the butcher did not slaughter the ox,
The ox did not drink the water,

The water did not put out the fire,

The fire did not burn the stick,

The stick did not beat the dog,

The dog did not bite John,

John did not cut the hay

And they did not come back home.

Then the master sent out the hangman
And told him to hang the butcher;

The hangman did hang the butcher,

The butcher slaughtered the ox,

The ox drank the water ,

The water put out the fire.

The fire burnt the stick.

The stick beat the dog.

The dog bit John,

John cut the hay.

And they all came back home. 3

A German nursery rhyme. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

We shall now see with what “virtuosity of thought” and with what
schoolboy ish material Jacques le bonhomme elaborates on this
scheme.

3. The Ancients

Properly speaking we ought to begin here with the Negroes; but
Saint Max, who undoubtedly sits in the “Council of Guardians”, in
his unfathomable wisdom introduces the Negroes only later, and
even then “without any claim to thoroughness and authenticity”. If,
therefore, we make Greek philosophy precede the Negro era, i.e.,
the campaigns of Sesostris and Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt, 48 it is
because we are confident that our holy author has arranged
everything wisely.

“Let us, therefore, take a look at the activities which tempt”
Stirner’s ancients.

‘“For the ancients, the world was a truth,’ says Feuerbach; but he forgets to make the
important addition: a truth, the untruth of which they sought to penetrateand, finally,
did indeed penetrate” (p. 22).

“For the ancients”, their “world” (not the world) “was a
truth” — whereby, of course, no truth about the ancient world is
stated, but only that the ancients did not have a Christian attitude to
their world. As soon as untruth penetrated their world (i.e., as soon as
this world itself disintegrated in consequence of practical con-
flicts — and to demonstrate this materialistic development empirically
would be the only thing of interest), the ancient philosophers sought
to penetrate the world of truth or the truth of their world and then,
of course, they found that it had become untrue. Their very search
was itself a symptom of the internal collapse of this world. Jacques le
bonhomme transforms the idealist symptom into the material cause
of the collapse and, as a German church father, makes antiquity itself
seek its own negation, Christianity. For him this position of antiquity
is inevitable because the ancients are “ children ’ who seek to
penetrate the “world of things”. “And that is fairly easy too”: by
transforming the ancient world into the later consciousness regard-
ing the ancient world, Jacques le bonhomme can, of course, jump
in a single leap from the materialistic ancient world to the world of
religion, to Christianity. Now the “word of God” immediately
emerges in opposition to the real world of antiquity; the Christian
conceived as the modern sceptic emerges in opposition to the ancient
man conceived as philosopher. His Christian “is never convinced of
the vanity of the word of God” and, in consequence of this lack of

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conviction, he “believes” “in its eternal and invincible truth” (p. 22).
Just as Stirner’s ancient is ancient because he is a non-Christian, not
yet a Christian or a hidden Christian, so his primitive Christian is a
Christian because he is a non-atheist, not yet an atheist or a hidden
atheist. Stirner, therefore, causes Christianity to be negated by the
ancients and modern atheism by the primitive Christians, instead of
the reverse. Jacques le bonhomme, like all other speculative
philosophers, seizes everything by its philosophical tail. A few more
examples of this child-like gullibility immediately follow.

“The Christian must consider himself a ‘stranger on the earth’ (Epistle to the
Hebrews 11 : 13)” (p. 23).

On the contrary, the strangers on earth (arising from extremely
natural causes e.g., the colossal concentration of wealth in the whole
Roman world, etc., etc.) had to consider themselves Christians. It was
not their Christianity that made them vagrants, but their vagrancy
that made them Christians.

On the same page the holy father jumps straight from Sophocles’
Antigone and the sacredness of the burial ceremonial connected with
it to the Gospel of Matthew, 8:22 (let the dead bury their dead), while
Hegel, at any rate in the Phanomenologie, gradually passes from
the Antigone, etc., to the Romans. With equal right Saint Max
could have passed at once to the Middle Ages and, together with
Hegel, have advanced this biblical statement against the Crusaders or
even, in order to be quite original, have contrasted the burial of
Polynices by Antigone with the transfer of the ashes of Napoleon
from St. Helena to Paris. It is stated further:

“In Christianity the inviolable truth of family ties” (which on page 22 is noted as
one of the “truths” of the ancients) “is depicted as an untruth which should be got rid
of as quickly as possible (Mark, 10 : 29) and so in everything” (p. 23).

This proposition, in which reality is again turned upside-down,
should be put the right way up as follows: the actual untruth of
family ties (concerning which, inter alia, the still existing documents
of pre-Christian Roman legislation should be examined) is depicted
in Christianity as an inviolable truth, “and so in everything”.

From these examples, therefore, it is superabundantly evident
how Jacques le bonhomme, who strives to “get rid as quickly as
possible” of empirical history, stands facts on their heads, causes
material history to be produced by ideal history, “and so in
everything”. At the outset we learn only the alleged attitude of the
ancients to their world; as dogmatists they are put in opposition to
the ancient world, their own world, instead of appearing as its
creators; it is a question only of the relation of consciousness to the

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object, to truth; it is a question, therefore, only of the philosophical
relation of the ancients to their world — ancient history is replaced by
the history of ancient philosophy, and this only in the form in which
Saint Max imagines it according to Hegel and Feuerbach.

Thus the history of Greece, from the time of Pericles inclusively, is
reduced to a struggle of abstractions: reason, spirit, heart, worldli-
ness, etc. These are the Greek parties. In this ghostly world, which is
presented as the Greek world, allegorical persons such as Madame
Purity of Heart “machinate” and mythical figures like Pilate (who
must never be missing where there are children) find a place quite
seriously side by side with Timon of Phlius.

After presenting us with some astounding revelations about the
Sophists and Socrates, Saint Max immediately jumps to the Sceptics.
He discovers that they completed the work which Socrates began.
Hence the positive philosophy of the Greeks that followed im-
mediately after the Sophists and Socrates, especially Aristotle’s
encyclopaedic learning, does not exist at all for Jacques le
bonhomme. He strives “to get rid as quickly as possible” of the past
and hurries to the transition to the “moderns”, finding this
transition in the Sceptics, Stoics and Epicureans. Let us see what our
holy father has to reveal about them.

“The Stoics wish to realise the ideal of the wise man ... the man who knows how to
live ... they find this ideal in contempt for the world, in a life without living
development [...] without friendly intercourse with the world, i.e., in a life of isolation
[...] not in a life in common with others; the Stoic alone lives, for him everything else is
dead. The Epicureans, on the other hand, demand an active life” (p. 30).

We refer Jacques le bonhomme — the man who wants to realise
himself and who knows how to live — to, inter alia, Diogenes Laertius:
there he will discover that the wise man, the sophos, is nothing but the
idealised Stoic, not the Stoic the realised wise man; he will discover
that the sophos is by no means only a Stoic but is met with just as much
among the Epicureans, the Neo-academists and the Sceptics.
Incidentally, the sophos is the first form in which the Greek philosophos
confronts us; he appears mythologically in the seven wise men, in
practice in Socrates, and as an ideal among the Stoics, Epicureans,
Neo-academists 49 and Sceptics. Each of these schools, of course, has
its own ffotpog , a just as Saint Bruno has his own “unique sex”. Indeed,
Saint Max can find “le sage ” again in the eighteenth century in the
philosophy of Enlightenment, and even in Jean Paul in the shape of
the “wise men” like Emanuel, b etc. The Stoical wise man by no means

a Wise man. — Ed.

b Jean Paul, Hesperus oder 45 Hundsposttage . — Ed.

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has in mind “life without living development”, but an absolutely active
life, as is evident even from his concept of nature, which is
Heraclitean, dynamic, developing and living, while for the
Epicureans the principle of the concept of nature is the mors
immortalise as Lucretius says, the atom, and, in opposition to
Aristotle’s divine energy, divine leisure is put forward as the ideal of
life instead of “active life”.

“The ethics of the Stoics (their only science, for they were unable to say anything
about the spirit except what its relation to the world should be; and about
nature — physics — they could say only that the wise man has to assert himself against it)
is not a doctrine of the spirit, but merely a doctrine of rejection of the world and of
self-assertion against the world” (p. 31).

The Stoics were able to “say about nature” that physics is one of
the most important sciences for the philosopher and consequently
they even went to the trouble of further developing the physics of
Heraclitus; they were “further able to say” that the wpa , masculine
beauty, is the highest that the individual could represent, and
glorified life in tune with nature, although they fell into contradic-
tions in so doing. According to the Stoics, philosophy is divided into
three doctrines: “physics, ethics, logic”.

“They compare philosophy to the animal and to the egg, logic — to the bones and
sinews of the animal, and to the outer shell of the egg, ethics — to the flesh of the
animal and to the albumen of the egg, and physics — to the soul of the animal and to the
yolk of the egg” (Diogenes Laertius, Zeno).

From this alone it is evident how little true it is to say that “ethics is
the only science of the Stoics”. It should be added also that, apart
from Aristotle, they were the chief founders of formal logic and
systematics in general.

That the “Stoics were unable to say anything about the spirit” is so
little true that even seeing spirits originated from them, on account of
which Epicurus opposes them, as an Enlightener, and ridicules them
as “old women”, b while precisely the Neo-Platonists borrowed part
of their tales about spirits from the Stoics. This spirit-seeing of the
Stoics arises, on the one hand, from the impossibility of achieving a
dynamic concept of nature without the material furnished by
empirical natural science, and, on the other hand, from their effort
to interpret the ancient Greek world and even religion in a
speculative manner and make them analogous to the thinking spirit.

The “ethics of the Stoics” is so much a “doctrine of world rejection
and of self-assertion against the world” that, for example, it was

a Immortal death. Lucretius, De rerum natura libri sex. Book 3, Verse 882. — Ed.
b See present edition, Vol. 1, p. 43. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

counted a Stoical virtue to “have a sound fatherland, a worthy
friend”, that “the beautiful alone” is declared to be “the good”, and
that the Stoical wise man is allowed to mingle with the world in every
way, for example, to commit incest, etc., etc. The Stoical wise man is
to such an extent caught up “in a life of isolation and not in a life in
common with others” that it is said of him in Zeno:

“Let not the wise man wonder at anything that seems wonderful — but neither will
the worthy man live in solitude, for he is social by nature and active in practice ”
(Diogenes Laertius, Book VII, 1).

Incidentally, it would be asking too much to demand that, for the
sake of refuting this schoolboyish wisdom of Jacques le bonhomme,
one should set forth the very complicated and contradictory ethics of
the Stoics.

In connection with the Stoics, Jacques le bonhomme has to note the
existence of the Romans also (p. 31), of whom, of course, he is unable
to say anything, since they have no philosophy. The only thing we
hear of them is that Horace (!) “did not go beyond the Stoics’ worldly
wisdom” (p. 32). Integer vitae, scelerisque purus / a

In connection with the Stoics, Democritus is also mentioned in the
following way: a muddled passage of Diogenes Laertius ( Democritus ,
Book IX, 7, 45), which in addition has been inaccurately translated, is
copied out from some textbook, and made the basis for a lengthy
diatribe about Democritus. This diatribe has the distinguishing
feature of being in direct contradiction to its basis, i.e., to the
above-mentioned muddled and inaccurately translated passage, and
converts “peace of mind” (Stirner’s translation of evJ'dufiia. , in Low
German Wellmuth ) into “rejection of the world”. The fact is that
Stirner imagines that Democritus was a Stoic, and indeed of the sort
that the unique and the ordinary schoolboyish consciousness
conceive a Stoic to be. Stirner thinks that “his whole activity amounts
to an endeavour to detach himself from the world”, “hence to a
rejection of the world”, and that in the person of Democritus he can
refute the Stoics. That the eventful life of Democritus, who had
wandered through the world a great deal, flagrantly contradicts this
notion of Saint Max’s; that the real source from which to learn about
the philosophy of Democritus is Aristotle and not a couple of
anecdotes from Diogenes Laertius; that Democritus, far from
rejecting the world, was, on the contrary, an empirical natural
scientist and the first encyclopaedic mind among the Greeks; that his
almost unknown ethics was limited to a few remarks which he is

a He of life without flaw, pure from sin. Horace, The Odes, Book 1 — Ode XXII.
Verse 1. — Ed.

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alleged to have made when he was an old, much-travelled man; that
his writings on natural science can be called philosophy only per
abusum , a because for him, in contrast to Epicurus, the atom was only
a physical hypothesis, an expedient for explaining facts, just as it is in
the proportional combinations of modern chemistry (Dalton and
others) — all this does not suit the purpose of Jacques le bonhomme.
Democritus must be understood in the “unique” fashion, Demo-
critus speaks of euthymia, hence of peace of mind, hence of
withdrawal into oneself, hence of rejection of the world. Democritus
is a Stoic, and he differs from the Indian fakir mumbling “Brahma”
(the word should have been “Om”), 50 only as the comparative differs
from the superlative, i.e., “only in degree

Of the Epicureans our friend knows exactly as much as he does of
the Stoics, viz., the unavoidable schoolboy’s minimum. He contrasts
the Epicurean “hedone” b with the “ataraxia” c of the Stoics and
Sceptics, not knowing that this “ataraxia” is also to be found in
Epicurus and, moreover, as something placed higher than the
“hedone” — in consequence of which his whole contrast falls to the
ground. He tells us that the Epicureans “teach only a different attitude
to the world” from that of the Stoics; but let him show us the
(non-Stoic) philosopher of “ancient or modern times” who does not
do “only” the same. Finally, Saint Max enriches us with a new dictum
of the Epicureans: “the world must be deceived, for it is my enemy”.
Hitherto it was only known that the Epicureans made statements in
the sense that the world must be disillusioned, and especially freed
from fear of gods, for the world is my friend.

To give our saint some indication of the real base on which the
philosophy of Epicurus rests, it is sufficient to mention that the idea
that the state rests on the mutual agreement of people, on a contrat
social (au\>-&fxrj d ), is found for the first time in Epicurus.

The extent to which Saint Max’s disclosures about the Sceptics
follow the same line is already evident from the fact that he considers
their philosophy more radical than that of Epicurus. The Sceptics
reduced the theoretical relation of people to things to appearance,
and in practice they left everything as of old, being guided by this
appearance just as much as others are guided by actuality; they
merely gave it another name. Epicurus, on the other hand, was the
true radical Enlightener of antiquity; he openly attacked the ancient
religion, and it was from him, too, that the atheism of the Romans,

a By abuse, i. e., improperly, wrongly. — Ed.
b Pleasure. — Ed.

L Equanimity, imperturbability, intrepidity. — Ed.
d Contract (see present edition, Vol. 1, pp. 409-10). — Ed.

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insofar as it existed, was derived. For this reason, too, Lucretius
praised Epicurus as the hero who was the first to overthrow the gods
and trample religion underfoot; for this reason among all church
fathers, from Plutarch to Luther, Epicurus has always had the
reputation of being the atheist philosopher par excellence , and was
called a swine; for which reason, too, Clement of Alexandria says
that when Paul takes up arms against philosophy he has in mind
Epicurean philosophy alone. ( Stromatum , Book I [chap. XI], p. 295,
Cologne edition, 1688. a ) Hence we see how “cunning, perfidious”
and “clever” was the attitude of this open atheist to the world in
directly attacking its religion, while the Stoics adapted the ancient
religion in their own speculative fashion, and the Sceptics used their
concept of “appearance” as the excuse for being able to accompany
all their judgments with a reservatio mentalis.

Thus, according to Stirner, the Stoics finally arrive at “contempt
for the world” (p. 30), the Epicureans at “the same worldly wisdom
as the Stoics” (p. 32), and the Sceptics at the point where they “let the
world alone and do not worry about it at all”. Hence, according to
Stirner, all three end in an attitude of indifference to the world, of
“contempt for the world” (p. 485). Long before him, Hegel
expressed it in this way: Stoicism, Scepticism, Epicureanism “aimed
at making the mind indifferent towards everything that actuality has
to offer” ( Philosophie der Geschichte, b p. 327).

“The ancients,” writes Saint Max, summing up his criticism of the ancient world of
ideas, “it is true, had ideas, but they did not know the idea ” (p. 30). In this connection,
“one should recall what was said earlier about our childhood ideas” (ibid.).

The history of ancient philosophy has to conform to Stirner’s
design. In order that the Greeks should retain their role of children,
Aristotle ought not to have lived and his thought in and for itself
(t ) vo7jatC xafLaoTTjv), his self-thinking reason (aoxov Vos To vovO

and his self-thinking intellect (t), vorjtKC vot) aewc) should never
have occurred; and in general his Metaphysics and the third book of
his Psychology c ought not to have existed.

With just as much right as Saint Max here recalls “what was said
earlier about our childhood”, when he discussed “our childhood”
he could have said: let the reader look up what will be said below
about the ancients and the Negroes and will not be said about
Aristotle.

a See present edition, Vol. 1, p. 488. — Ed.

b G.W.F. Hegel, Vorlesungen iiber die Philosophie der Geschichte. — Ed.
c Aristoteles, De anima. — Ed.

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In order to appreciate the true meaning of the last ancient
philosophies during the dissolution of the ancient world, Jacques le
bonhomme had only to look at the real situation in life of their
adherents under the world dominion of Rome. He could have
found, inter alia, in Lucian a detailed description of how the people
regarded them as public buffoons, and how the Roman capitalists,
proconsuls, etc., hired them as court jesters for their entertainment,
so that after squabbling at the table with slaves for a few bones and a
crust of bread and after being given a special sour wine, they would
amuse the master of the house and his guests with delightful words
like “ataraxia”, “aphasia”, 3 “hedone”, etc.*

Incidentally, if our good man wanted to make the history of
ancient philosophy into a history of antiquity, then as a matter of
course he ought to have merged the Stoics, Epicureans and Sceptics
in the Neo-Plat onists, whose philosophy is nothing but a fantastic
combination of the Stoic, Epicurean and Sceptical doctrine with the
content of the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle. Instead of that, he
merges these doctrines directly in Christianity.**

It is not “Stirner” that has left Greek philosophy “behind him”,
but Greek philosophy that has “Stirner” behind it (cf. Wigand,
p. 186 b ). Instead of telling us how “antiquity” arrives at a world of
things and “copes” with it, this ignorant school-master causes
antiquity blissfully to vanish by means of a quotation from Timon;
whereby antiquity the more naturally “arrives at its final goal” since,
according to Saint Max, the ancients “found themselves placed by
nature” in the ancient “communality”, which, “let us say in
conclusion”, “can be understood” the more easily because this
communality, the family, etc., are dubbed “the so-called natural ties”
(p. 33). By means of nature the ancient “world of things” is created,
and by means of Timon and Pilate (p. 32) it is destroyed. Instead of
describing the “world of things” which provides the material basis of

* [The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:] ... just as after the
Revolution the French aristocrats became the dancing instructors of the whole of
Europe, and the English lords will soon find their true place in the civilised world as
stable-hands and kennel-men.

** [The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:] On the contrary,
Stirner should have shown us that Hellenism even after its disintegration still
continued to exist for a long time; that next to it the Romans gained world
domination, what they really did in the world, how the Roman world developed and
declined, and finally how the Hellenic and Roman world perished, spiritually in
Christianity and materially in the migration of the peoples.

a Refusal to express any definite opinion. — Ed.
b Max Stirner, “Recensenten Stirners”. — Ed.

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Christianity, he causes this “world of things” to be annihilated in the
world of the spirit, in Christianity.

The German philosophers are accustomed to counterpose antiqui-
ty, as the epoch of realism, to Christianity and modern times, as the
epoch of idealism, whereas the French and English economists,
historians and scientists are accustomed to regard antiquity as the
period of idealism in contrast to the materialism and empiricism of
modern times. In the same way antiquity can be considered to be
idealistic insofar as in history the ancients represent the “ citoyen ”, the
idealist politician, while in the final analysis the moderns turn into
the “bourgeois”, the realist ami du commerce a — or again it can be
considered to be realistic, because for the ancients the communality
was a “truth”, whereas for the moderns it is an idealist “lie”. All
these abstract counterposings and historical constructions are of very
little use.

The “unique thing” we learn from this whole portrayal of the
ancients is that, whereas Stirner “knows” very few “things” about
the ancient world, he has all the “better seen through” them (cf.
Wigand, p. 191).

Stirner is truly that same “man child” of whom it is prophesied in
the Revelation of St. John, 12:5, that he “was to rule all nations with
a rod of iron”. We have seen how he sets about the unfortunate
heathen with the iron rod of his ignorance. The “moderns” will fare
no better.

4. The Moderns

“Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed
away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17) (p. 33).

By means of this biblical saying the ancient world has now indeed
“passed away” or, as Saint Max really wanted to say, “all gone”, b and
with one leap c we have jumped over to the new, Christian, youthful,
Mongoloid “world of the spirit”. We shall see that this, too, will have
“all gone” in a very short space of time.

“Whereas it was stated above ‘for the ancients, the world was a truth’, we must say
here ‘for the moderns the spirit was a truth', but in neither case should we forget the
important addition; a truth, the untruth of which they sought to penetrate and,
finally, did indeed penetrate’” (p. 33).

a An expression of Fourier (see Ch. Fourier, Des trois unites extemes). — Ed.
b Here the authors ironically use the Berlin dialect words alle jeworden. — Ed.

In German a pun on the word Satz, which means a leap, a jump and also a
sentence, a proposition. — Ed.

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While we do not wish to devise any Stirner-like constructions, “we
must say here”: for the moderns truth was a spirit, namely the holy
spirit. Jacques le bonhomme again takes the moderns not in their
actual historical connection with the “world of things” — which,
despite being “all gone”, nevertheless continues to exist — but in their
theoretical, and indeed religious, attitude. For him the history of the
Middle Ages and modern times again exists only as the history of
religion and philosophy; he devoutly believes all the illusions of these
epochs and the philosophical illusions about these illusions. Thus,
having given the history of the moderns the same turn as he gave
that of the ancients, Saint Max can then easily “demonstrate” in it a
“similar course to that taken by antiquity”, and pass from the
Christian religion to modern German philosophy as rapidly as he
passed from ancient philosophy to the Christian religion. On page 37
he himself gives a characterisation of his historical illusions, by
making the discovery that “the ancients have nothing to offer but
worldly wisdom ” and that “the moderns have never gone, and do not
go, beyond theology ”, and he solemnly asks: “What did the moderns
seek to penetrate?” The ancients and moderns alike do nothing else
in history but “seek to penetrate something” — the ancients try to
find out what is behind the world of things, the moderns behind the
world of the spirit. In the end the ancients are left “without a world”
and the moderns “without a spirit”; the ancients wanted to become
idealists, the moderns to become realists (p. 485), but both of them
were only occupied with the divine (p. 488) — “history up to now” is
only the “history of the spiritual man” (what faith!) (p. 442) — in
short we have again the child and the youth, the Negro and the
Mongol, and all the rest of the terminology of the “various
transformations” .

At the same time we see a faithful imitation of the speculative
manner, by which children beget their father, and what is earlier is
brought about by what is later. From the very outset Christians must
“seek to penetrate the untruthfulness of their truth”, they must
immediately be hidden atheists and critics, as was already indicated
concerning the ancients. But not satisfied with this, Saint Max gives
one more brilliant example of his “virtuosity in” (speculative)
“thought” (p. 230):

“Now, after liberalism has acclaimed man, one can state that thereby only the last
consequence of Christianity has been drawn and that Christianity originally set itself no other
task than that of ... realising man.”

Since allegedly the last consequence of Christianity has been
drawn, “one” can state that it has been drawn. As soon as the later

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ones have transformed what was earlier “ one can state” that the
earlier ones “originally”, namely “in truth”, in essence, in heaven, as
hidden Jews, “set themselves no other task” than that of being
transformed by the later ones. Christianity, for Jacques le bonhomme,
is a self-positing subject, the absolute spirit, which “originally”
posits its end as its beginning. Cf. Hegel’s Encyclopadie, etc.

“Hence” (namely because one can attribute an imaginary task to Christianity)
“there follows the delusion” (of course, before Feuerbach it was impossible to know
what task Christianity “had originally set itself”) “that Christianity attaches infinite
value to the ego, as revealed, for example, in the theory of immortality and pastoral
work. No, it attaches this value to man alone, man alone is immortal, and only because I
am a man, am I also immortal.”

If, then, from the whole of Stirner’s scheme and formulation of
tasks it emerges, already sufficiently clearly, that Christianity can
lend immortality only to Feuerbach’s “man”, we learn here in
addition that this comes about also because Christianity does not
ascribe this immortality — to animals as well.

Let us now also draw up a scheme a la Saint Max.

“Now, after” modern large-scale landownership, which has arisen
from the process of parcellation, has actually “ proclaimed ” primogen-
iture, “ one can state that thereby only the last consequence” of the
parcellation of landed property “ has been drawn” “ and that”
parcellation “in truth originally set itself no other task than that of
realising ” primogeniture, true primogeniture. “ Hence there follows the
delusion” that parcellation “ attaches infinite value ” to equal rights of
members of the family, “as revealed, for example”, in the laws of
inheritance of the Code Napoleon. “No, it .attaches this value solely”
to the eldest son; “only” the eldest son, the future owner of the
entailed estate, will become a large landowner, “and only because I
am” the eldest son “I will also be” a large landowner.

In this way it is infinitely easv to give history “unique” turns, as
one has only to describe its very latest result as the “task” which “in
truth originally it set itself”. Thereby earlier times acquire a bizarre
and hitherto unprecedented appearance. It produces a striking
impression, and does not require great production costs. As, for
instance, if one says that the real “task” which the institution of
landed property “originally set itself” was to replace people by
sheep — a consequence which has recently become manifest in
Scotland, etc., or that the proclamation of the Capet dynasty 51
“originally in truth set itself the task” of sending Louis XVI to the
guillotine and M. Guizot into the Government. The important thing
is to do it in a solemn, pious, priestly way, to draw a deep breath, and
then suddenly to burst out: “Now, at last, one can state it.”

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What Saint Max says about the moderns in the above section
(pp. 33-37) is only the prologue to the spirit history which is in store
for us. Here, too, we see how he tries “to rid himself as quickly as
possible” of empirical facts and parades before us the same
categories as in the case of the ancients — reason, heart, spirit,
etc. — only they are given different names. The Sophists become
sophistical scholastics, “humanists, Machiavellism (the art of
printing, the New World”, etc.; cf. Hegel’s Geschichte der Philosophies
III, p. 128) who represent reason; Socrates is transformed into
Luther, who extols the heart (Hegel, l.c., p. 227), and of the post-
Reformation period we learn that during that time it was a matter of
“empty cordiality” (which in the section about the ancients was called
“purity of heart”, cf. Hegel, l.c., p. 241). All this on page 34.
In this way Saint Max “proves” that “Christianity takes a course
similar to that of antiquity”. After Luther he no longer even troubles
to provide names for his categories; he hurries in seven-league boots
to modern German philosophy. Four appositions (“until nothing
remains but empty cordiality, all the universal love of mankind, love
of man, consciousness of freedom, ‘self-consciousness’”, p. 34;
Hegel, l.c., pp. 228, 229), four words fill the gulf between Luther and
Hegel and “only thus is Christianity completed”. This whole
argument is achieved in one masterly sentence, with the help of such
levers as “at last” — “and from that time” — “since one” — “also” —
“from day to day” — “until finally”, etc., a sentence which the reader
can verify for himself on the classic page 34 already mentioned.

Finally Saint Max gives us a few more examples of his faith,
showing that he is so little ashamed of the Gospel that he asserts: “We
really are nothing but spirit”, and maintains that at the end of the
ancient world “after long efforts” the “spirit” has really “rid itself of
the world”. And immediately afterwards he once more betrays the
secret of his scheme, by declaring of the Christian spirit that “ like a
youth it entertains plans for improving or saving the world”. All this
on page 36.

“So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit
upon a scarlet-coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy.... And upon her forehead
was a name written, Mystery, Babylon the Great ... and I saw the woman drunken with
the blood of the saints”, etc. (Revelation of St. John, 17, Verses 3, 5, 6).

The apocalyptic prophet did not prophesy accurately this time.
Now at last, after Stirner has acclaimed man, one can state that he
ought to have said: So he carried me into the wilderness of the spirit.
And I saw a man sit upon a scarlet-coloured beast, full of blasphemy

G.W.F. Hegel, Vorlesungen fiber die Geschichte der Philosophic . — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

of names ... and upon his forehead was a name written, Mystery, the
unique ... and I saw the man drunken with the blood of holy, etc.
So we now enter the wilderness of the spirit.

A. The Spirit (Pure History of Spirits)

The first thing we learn about the “spirit” is that it is not the spirit
but “the realm, of spirits” that “is immensely large”. Saint Max has
nothing to say immediately of the spirit except that “an immensely
large realm of spirits” exists — just as all he knows of the Middle Ages
is that this period lasted for “a long time”. Having presupposed that
this “realm of spirits” exists, he subsequently proves its existence
with the help of ten theses.

1 . The spirit is not a free spirit until it is not occupied with itself alone, until it is not
“solely concerned” with its own world, the “spiritual” world (first with itself alone and
then with its own world).

2. “It is a free spirit only in a world of its own.”

3. “Only by means of a spiritual world is the spirit really spirit.”

4. “Before the spirit has created its world of spirits, it is not spirit.”

5. “Its creations make it spirit.”...

6. ’’Its creations are its world.” ...

7. “The spirit is the creator of a spiritual world.” ...

8. “The spirit exists only when it creates the spiritual.” ...

9. “Only together with the spiritual, which is its creation, is it real.”...

10. “B u t the works or offspring of the spirit are nothing but — spirits” (pp. 38-39).

In thesis 1 the “spiritual world” is again immediately presupposed
as existing, instead of being deduced, and this thesis 1 is again
preached to us in theses 2-9 in eight new transformations. At the end
of thesis 9 we find ourselves exactly where we were at the end of
thesis 1 — and then in thesis 10 a “but” suddenly introduces us to
“ spirits ”, about whom so far nothing has been said.

“Since the spirit exists only by creating the spiritual, we look around for its first
creations” (p. 41).

According to theses 3, 4, 5, 8, and 9, however, the spirit is its own
creation. This is now expressed thus, the spirit, i.e., the first creation
of the spirit,

“must arise out of nothing” ... “it must first create itself” ... “its first creation is itself,
the spirit” (ibid.). “When it has accomplished this creative act there follows from then
on a natural reproduction of creations just as, according to the myth, only the first human
beings had to be created and the rest of the human race was reproduced of itself”
(ibid.).

“However mystical this may sound, we nevertheless experience this daily. Are you
a thinking person before you think? In creating your first thought, you create yourself.

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149

the thinker, for you do not think until you think, i.e.” — i.e ., — “have some thought. Is it
not your singing alone that makes you a singer, your speech that makes you a speaking
person? Well, in the same way only the creation of the spiritual makes you spirit.”

Our saintly conjurer assumes that the spirit creates the spiritual in
order to draw the conclusion that the spirit creates itself as spirit; on
the other hand, he assumes it as spirit in order to allow it to arrive at
its spiritual creations (which, “according to the myth, are reproduced
of themselves” and become spirits). So far we have the long-familiar
orthodox-Hegelian phrases. The genuinely “unique” exposition of
what Saint Max wants to say only begins with the example he gives.
That is to say, if Jacques le bonhomme cannot get any further, if even
“One” and “It” are unable to float his stranded ship, “Stirner” calls
his third serf to his assistance, the “You”, who never leaves him in the
lurch and on whom he can rely in extremity. This “You” is an
individual whom we are not encountering for the first time, a pious
and faithful servant, 3 whom we have seen going through fire and
water, a worker in the vineyard of his lord, a man who does not allow
anything to terrify him, in a word he is: Szeliga.* When “Stirner” is
in the utmost plight in his exposition he cries out: Szeliga,
help! — and trusty Eckart Szeliga immediately puts his shoulder to
the wheel to get the cart out of the mire. We shall have more to say
later about Saint Max’s relation to Szeliga.

It is a question of spirit which creates itself out of nothing, hence it is
a question of nothing, which out of nothing makes itself spirit. From
this Saint Max derives the creation of Szeliga’s spirit from Szeliga.
And who else if not Szeliga could “Stirner” count on allowing
himself to be put in the place of nothing in the manner indicated
above? Who could be taken in by such a trick but Szeliga, who feels
highly flattered at being allowed to appear at all as one of the
dramatis personae ? What Saint Max had to prove was not that a given
“you”, i.e., the given Szeliga, becomes a thinker, speaker, singer
from the moment when he begins to think, speak, sing — but that the
thinker creates himself out of nothing by beginning to think, that the
singer creates himself out of nothing by beginning to sing, etc., and it is
not even the thinker and the singer, but the thought and the singing as
subjects that create themselves out of nothing by beginning to think and
to sing. For the rest, “Stirner makes only the extremely simple

* Cf. Die heilige Familie, oder Kritik der kritischen Kritik, where the earlier exploits of
this man of God have already been set forth. b

3 Matthew 25:21.— Ed.

b See present edition, Vol. 4, pp. 55-77. Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

reflection” and states only the “extremely popular” proposition (cf.
Wigand, p. 156) that Szeliga develops one of his qualities by
developing it. There is, of course, absolutely nothing “to be
wondered at” in the fact that Saint Max does not even “make”
correctly “such simple reflections”, but expresses them incorrectly in
order thereby to prove a still much more incorrect proposition with
the aid of the most incorrect logic in the world.

Far from it being true that “out of nothing” I make myself, for
example, a “speaker”, the nothing which forms the basis here is a
very manifold something, the real individual, his speech organs, a
definite stage of physical development, an existing language and
dialects, ears capable of hearing and a human environment from
which it is possible to hear something, etc., etc. Therefore, in the
development of a property something is created by something out of
something, and by no means comes, as in Hegel’s Logik, from
nothing, through nothing to nothing. 3

Now that Saint Max has his faithful Szeliga close at hand,
everything goes forward smoothly again. We shall see how, by means
of his “you”, he again transforms the spirit into the youth, exactly as
he earlier transformed the youth into the spirit; here we shall again
find the whole history of the youth repeated almost word for word,
only with a few camouflaging alterations — just as the “immensely
large realm of spirits” mentioned on page 37 was nothing but the
“realm of the spirit”, to found and enlarge which was the “aim” of
the spirit of the youth (p. 17).

“Just as you, however, distinguish yourself from the thinker, singer, speaker, so you
distinguish yourself no less from the spirit and are well aware that you are something
else as well as spirit. However, just as in the enthusiasm of thinking it may easily happen
that sight and hearing fail the thinking ego, so the enthusiasm of the spirit has seized
you too, and you now aspire with all your might to become wholly spirit and merged in
spirit. The spirit is your ideal, something unattained, something of the beyond: spirit
means your — God, ‘God is spirit’ 13 .... You inveigh against yourself, you who cannot get
rid of a relic of the non-spiritual. Instead of saying: I am more than spirit, you say
contritely: I am less than spirit, and I can only envisage spirit, pure spirit, or the spirit
which is nothing but spirit, but I am not it, and since I am not it, then it is an other, it exists
as an other, whom I call ‘God’.”

After previously for a long time occupying ourselves with the trick
of making something out of nothing, we now suddenly, perfectly
“naturally”, come to an individual who is something else as well as
spirit, consequently is something, and wants to become pure spirit.

3 Cf. G.W.F. Hegel, Wissenschaft der Logik, Th. I, Abt. 2. — Ed.
b John 4:24. — Ed.

The German Ideoiogv. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max 151

i.e., nothing. This much easier problem, i.e.. to turn something into
nothing, once again poses the whole story of the vouth, who “has ve:
to seek the pertect soiri*’ ', and one needs merely to repeat the old
phrases irom pages 17-18 to oe extricated from all difficulties.
Particulariy, when one has such an obedient and gullible servant as
Szeliga, on whom “Surne~ can impose the idea that just as “in the
enthusiasm of tiimking it mav easily' (!) “happen that sight and
nearing fail” him “Stimer”. so he, Szeliga. has also oeen “seized with
the enthusiasm of the spirit’ and he, Szeliga. is now aspiring with all
nis mignt to become spirit’ , instead oi acciuinng spirit, that is to sa\ ,
ne now has to piav the roie or the vouth as presented on page 1 6.
Szeliga beiieves it and in iear and trembling he obeys: he obevs when
Saint Max thunders at him: The spirit is vour ideal — vour God You
do this for me, vou do that for me. Nov von ‘ inveigh”, now ‘ \ on
sav”, now “vou can envisage’ , etc. When “Stirner” imposes on him
the idea that “the pure spirit is an other, for he” (Szeliga) “is noth'
then in truth, it is oniv Szeliga who is capable of believing him and
wno gabbles the entire nonsense after him. word for word. Inci
dentally, the method by which Jacques ie bonhomme makes up this
nonsense was already exhaustiveiv anaivsed when dealing with the
vouth Since vou are well aware that vou are something else as well
as a mathematician, vou aspire to become wholly a mathematician,
to become merged in mathematics, the mathematician is your ideal,
mathematician means vour — God. You sav contritelv: I am less than
a mathematician and 1 can oniv envisage the mathematician, and
since I am not him, then he is an other he exists as an other, whom
l call “God” . Someone else in Szeliga s place would say — Arago.

“Now. at Iasi afte^’ we have proved Stirner’s thesis to be a
repetition of the vouth”, “one can state’ that he “in truth originate
set himself no other task” than to identify the spirit of Christian
asceticism with spirit in general, and to identify the frivolous esprit,
for example, of the eighteenth century with Christian spiritlessness.

It follows, therefore that the necessity of spirit dwelling in the
bevonu, i.e,, being God, is not to be explained, as Stirner
asserts, “because ego and spirit are difierent names for different
things, because ego is not spirit and spirit is not ego” (p. 42). The
explanation lies in the “enthusiasm of the spirit” which is ascribed
without any grounds to Szeliga and which makes him an ascetic, i.e.,
a man who wishes to become God (pure spirit), and because he is not
able to do this posits God outside himself. But it was a matter of the
spirit having first to create itself out of nothing and then having to
create spirits out of itself. Instead of this, Szeliga now produces God
(the unique spirit that makes its appearance here) not because he,

7—2086

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

Szeliga, is the spirit, but because he is Szeliga, i.e., imperfect spirit,
unspiritual spirit, and therefore at the same time non-spirit. But
Saint Max does not say a word about how the Christian conception of
spirit as God arises, although this is now no longer such a clever feat;
he assumes the existence of this conception in order to explain it.

The history of the creation of the spirit “has in truth originally set
itself no other task” than to put Stirner’s stomach among the stars.

“Precisely because we are not the Precisely because we are not the

spirit which dwells within us, for that stomach which dwells within us, for that
very reason we had to very reason we had to

put it outside of ourselves; it was not us, and therefore we could not conceive it as
existing except outside of ourselves, beyond us, in the beyond” (p. 43).

It was a matter of the spirit having first to create itself and then
having to create something other than itself out of itself; the ques-
tion was: What is this something else? No answer is given to this ques-
tion, but after the above-mentioned “various transformations” and
twists, it becomes distorted into the following new question:

“The spirit is something other than the ego. But what is this something other?”
(p. 45).

Now, therefore, the question arises: What is the spirit other than
the ego? whereas the original question was: What is the spirit, owing
to its creation out of nothing, other than itself? With this Saint Max
jumps to the next “transformation”.

B. The Possessed ( Impure History of Spirits)

Without realising it, Saint Max has so far done no more than give
instruction in the art of spirit-seeing, by regarding the ancient and
modern world only as the “pseudo-body of a spirit”, as a spectral
phenomenon, and peeing in it only struggles of spirits. Now,
however, he consciously and ex professo gives instruction in the art of
ghost-seeing.

Instructions in the art of seeing spirits. First of all one must become
transformed into a complete fool, i.e., imagine oneself to be Szeliga,
and then say to oneself, as Saint Max does to this Szeliga: “Look
around you in the world and say for yourself whether a spirit is not
looking at you from everywhere!” If one can bring oneself to
imagine this, then the spirits will come “easily”, of themselves; in a
“flower” one sees only the “creator”, in the mountains — a^spirit of
loftiness”, in water — a “spirit of longing” or the longing of the spirit,
and one hears “millions of spirits speak through the mouths of

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153

people”. If one has achieved this level, if one can exclaim with Stir-
ner: “ Yes, ghosts are teeming in the whole world,” then “it is not
difficult to advance to the point” (p. 93) where one makes the
further exclamation: “Only in it? No, the world itself is an
apparition” (let your communication be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: for
whatsoever is more than these cometh of evil, 3 i.e., a logical
transition), “it is the wandering pseudo-body of a spirit, it is an
apparition.” Then cheerfully “look near at hand or into the distance,
you are surrounded by a ghostly world.... You see spirits”. If you are
an ordinary person you can be satisfied with that, but if you are
thinking of ranking yourself with Szeliga, then you can also look into
yourself and then “you should not be surprised” if, in these
circumstances and from the heights of Szeligality, you discover also
that “your spirit is a ghost haunting your body”, that you yourself
are a ghost which “awaits salvation, that is, a spirit”. Thereby you will
have arrived at the point where you are capable of seeing “spirits”
and “ghosts” in “all” people, and therewith spirit-seeing “reaches its
final goal” (pp. 46, 47).

The basis of this instruction, only much more correctly expressed,
is to be found in Hegel, inter alia, in the Geschichte der Philosophic, III,
pp. 124, 125.

Saint Max has such faith in his own instruction that as a result he
himself becomes Szeliga and asserts that

“ever since the word was made flesh, b the world is spiritualised, bewitched, a ghost”
(p- 47).

“Stirner” “sees spirits”.

Saint Max intends to give us a phenomenology of the Christian
spirit and in his usual way seizes on only one aspect. For the Christian
the world was not only spiritualised but equally ^spiritualised as,
for example, Hegel quite correctly admits in the passage mentioned,
where he brings the two aspects into relation with each other, which
Saint Max should also have done if he wanted to proceed historically.
As against the world’s despiritualisation in the Christian conscious-
ness, the ancients, “who saw gods everywhere”, can with equal
justification be regarded as the spiritualisers of the world — a con-
ception which our saintly dialectician rejects with the well-meaning
warning: “Gods, my dear modern man, are not spirits” (p. 47).
Pious Max recognises only the holy spirit as spirit.

But even if he had given us this phenomenology (which after
Hegel is moreover superfluous), he would all the same have given us

Matthew 5 : 37.— Ed.
b John 1 : 14. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

nothing. The standpoint at which people are content with such
tales about spirits is itself a religious one, because for people who
adopt it religion is a satisfactory answer, they regard religion as causa
sui a (for both “self-consciousness” and “man” are still religious)
instead of explaining it from the empirical conditions and showing
how definite relations of industry and intercourse are necessarily
connected with a definite form of society, hence, with a definite form
of state and hence with a definite form of religious consciousness. If
Stirner had looked at the real history of the Middle Ages, he could
have found why the Christian’s notion of the world took precisely
this form in the Middle Ages, and how it happened that it
subsequently passed into a different one; he could have found that
“ Christianity ” has no history whatever and that all the different forms in
which it was visualised at various times were not “self-determina-
tions” and “further developments” “of the religious spirit”, but
were brought about by wholly empirical causes in no way dependent
on any influence of the religious spirit.

Since Stirner “does not stick to the rules” (p. 45), it is possible,
before dealing in more detail with spirit-seeing, to say here and now
that the various “transformations” of Stirner’s people and their
world consist merely in the transformation of the entire history of
the world into the body of Hegei’s philosophy; into ghosts, which
only apparently are an “other being” of the thoughts of the Berlin
professor. In the Phanomenologie, the Hegelian bible, “the book”,
individuals are first of all transformed into “consciousness” [and the]
world into “object”, whereby the manifold variety of forms of life
and history is reduced to a different attitude of “consciousness” to
the “object”. This different attitude is reduced, in turn, to three
cardinal relations: 1) the relation of consciousness to the object as to
truth, or to truth as mere object (for example, sensual consciousness,
natural religion, Ionic philosophy, Catholicism, the authoritarian
state, etc.); 2) the relation of consciousness as the true to the object
(reason, spiritual religion, Socrates, Protestantism, the French
Revolution); 3) the true relation of consciousness to truth as object,
or to the object as truth (logical thinking, speculative philosophy, the
spirit as existing for the spirit). In Hegel, too, the first relation is
defined as God the Father, the second as Christ, the third as the Holy
Spirit, etc. Stirner already used these transformations when speaking
of child and youth, of ancient and modern, and he repeats them later
in regard to Catholicism and Protestantism, the Negro and the
Mongol, etc., and then accepts this series of camouflages of a thought

Its own cause. — Ed.

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The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

in all good faith as the world against which he has to assert and
maintain himself as a ‘ corporeal individual”.

Second set of instructions in spirit-seeing. How to transform the world
into the spectre of truth, and oneself into something made hoiv or
spectral. A conversation between Saint Max and his servant Szeiiga
(pp. 47, 48).

Saint Max: “You have spirit, tor you have thoughts. What are your thoughts'”
Szeiiga: “Spiritual entities.’

Saint Max: “Hence thev are not things 0 ”

Szeiiga: “No, but thev are the spirit of things, tne important element in all tilings,
their innermost essence, their idea.”

Saint Max: “Wnat vou think is, therefore, not mereiv your thought 0 ”

Szeiiga: “On the contrarv, it is the most real, genuineiv true thing in the world: it is
truth itself: when I but truly think, I think the truth. I can admittedlv be mistaken
about the rruth and fail to perceive it, but when I truly perceive, then the object of mv
perception is the rruth ”

Saint Max: “Thus, you endeavour all the time to perceive the truth 0 ”

Szeiiga: ‘Tor me the truth is sacred 1 .... The truth I cannot abolish; in the truth :
believe, and therefore I investigate into its nature: there is nothing higher than it,
it is eternal. Tne truth is sacred, eternal, it is the hoiv, the eternal.”

Saint Max (indignantly): “But you, by allowing yourself to become filled with this
holiness, become yourself hoiv.”

Thus, when Szeiiga truly perceives some object, the object ceases
to be an object and becomes “the truth”. This is the first manu-
facture of spectres on a iarge scaie. — It is now no longer a matter
of perceiving objects, but of perceiving the truth; first he per-
ceives objects truiy, which ne defines as the truth of perception,
and he transforms this into perception of the truth. But after Szeiiga
has thus allowed truth as a spectre to be imposed on him by the
threatening saint, his stern master strikes home with a question o'
conscience, whether he is filled “all the time” with longing for the
truth whereupon the thoroughly confused Szeiiga blurts out
somewhat prematurely: “For me the truth is sacred.” Bui hr
mi mediately notices his error and tries to correct it, by shamefaced U
transforming objects no longer into the truth, out into a number oi
truths, and abstracting “the truth” as the trutn of these truths, “the
truth” which he can now no longer abolish after he has distinguished
it from truths which are capable of being abolished. Therebv it
becomes “eternal”. But not satisfied w’ith giving it predicates such as
“sacred, eternal”, he transforms it into the holy, the eternal, as
subject. Alter this, of course. Saint Max can explain to him tha

a Here and in the following passages the German word heilig and its derivatives
are used, which can mean: holy, pious, sacred, sacredness, saintly, saint, to consecrate,
etc. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

having become “filled” with this holiness, he “himself becomes holy”
and “should not be surprised” if he now “finds nothing but a
spectre” in himself. Then our saint begins a sermon:

“The holy, moreover, is not for your senses” and quite consistently appends by
means of the conjunction “and’: “never will you, as a sensuous being, discover its
traces”; that is to say, after sensuous objects are “all gone” and “the truth”, “the
sacred truth”, “the holy” has taken their place. “But” — obviously! — “for your faith or
more exactly for your spirit” (for your lack of spirit), “for it is itself som^/imgspiritual”

( per appositioneni a ), “a spirit ” (again per appos.), “is spirit for the spirit’ .

Such is the art of transforming the ordinary world, “objects”, by
means of an arithmetical series of appositions, into “spirit for the
spirit”. Here we can only admire this dialectical method of
appositions — later we shall have occasion to explore it and present it
in all its classical beauty . b

The method of appositions can also be reversed — for example
here, after we have once produced “the holy”, it does not receive
further appositions, but is made the apposition of a new definition;
this is combining progression with equation. Thus, as a result of
some dialectical process “there remains the idea of another entity”
which “I should serve more than myself” ( per appos.), “which for
me should be more important than everything else” ( per appos.), “in
short — a something in which I should seek my true salvation ” (and
finally per appos. the return to the first series), and which becomes
“something ‘holy’” (p. 48). We have here two progressions which are
equated to each other and can thus provide the opportunity for a
great variety of equations. We shall deal with this later. By this
method too, “the sacred”, which hitherto we have been acquainted
with only as a purely theoretical designation of purely theoretical
relations, has acquired a new practical meaning as “something in
which I should seek my true salvation”, which makes it possible to
make the holy the opposite of the egoist. Incidentally we need hardly
mention that this entire dialogue with the sermon that follows is
nothing but another repetition of the story of the youth already met
with three or four times before.

Here, having arrived at the “egoist”, we need not stick to Stirner’s
“rules” either, because, firstly, we have to present his argument in
all its purity, free from any intervening intermezzos, and, secondly,
because in any case these intermezzi (on the analogy of “a Laza-
roni” — Wigand, p. 159, the word should be Lazzarone — Sancho
would say intermezzi’s) will occur again in other parts of the book,

a By means of an apposition. — Ed.
b See this volume, p. 274 et seq. — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

157

for Stirner, far from obeying his own requirement “always to
draw back into himself”, on the contrary expresses himself again
and again. We shall only just mention that the question raised on
page 45: What is this something distinct from the “ego” that is
the spirit? is now answered to the effect that it is the holy,
i.e., that which is foreign to the “ego”, and that everything that
is foreign to the “ego” is — thanks to some unstated appositions,
appositions “in themselves” — accordingly without more ado re-
garded as spirit. Spirit, the holy, the foreign are identical ideas, on
which he declares war, in the same way almost word for word as he
did at the very outset in regard to the youth and the man. We have,
therefore, still not advanced a step further than we had on page 20.

a) The Apparition

Saint Max now begins to deal seriously with the “spirits” that are
“offspring of the spirit” (p. 39), with the ghostliness of everything
(p. 47). At any rate, he imagines so. Actually, however, he only sub-
stitutes a new name for his former conception of history according to
which people were from the outset the representatives of general
concepts. These general concepts appear here first of all in the
Negroid form as objective spirits having for people the character of
objects, and at this level are called spectres or — apparitions. The chief
spectre is, of course, “man” himself, because, according to what has
been previously said, people only exist for one another as represen-
tatives of a universal — essence, concept, the holy, the foreign,
the spirit — i.e., only as spectral persons, spectres, and because,
according to Hegel’s Phanomenologie, page 255 and elsewhere, the
spirit, insofar as for man it has the “form of thinghood”, is another
man (see below about “the man”).

Thus, we see here the skies opening and the various kinds of
spectres passing before us one after the other. Jacques le bonhomme
forgets only that he has already caused ancient and modern times to
parade before us like gigantic spectres, compared with which ail the
harmless fancies about God, etc., are sheer trifles.

Spectre No. 1: the supreme being, God (p. 53). As was to be
expected from what has preceded, Jacques le bonhomme, whose
faith moves all the mountains 3 of world history, believes that “for
thousands of years people have set themselves the task ”, “have tired
themselves out struggling with the awful impossibility, the endless
Danaidean labour” — “to prove the existence of God”. We need not
waste any more words on this incredible belief.

a Of. 1 Corinthians 13 : 2. — Ed

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

Spectre No. 2: essence. What our good man says about essence is
limited — apart from what has been copied out of Hegel — to
“pompous words and miserable thoughts” (p. 53). “The advance
from” essence “to” world essence “is not difficult”, and this world
essence is, of course,

Spectre No. 3: the vanity of the world. There is nothing to say about
this except that from it “easily” arises

Spec tre No. 4: good and evil beings. Something, indeed, could be
said about this but is not said — and one passes at once to the next:
Spectre No. 5: the essence and its realm. We should not be at all
surprised that we find here essence for the second time in our
honest author, for he is fully aware of his “clumsiness” ( Wigand ,
p. 166), and therefore repeats everything several times in order
not to be misunderstood. Essence is here in the first place
defined as the proprietor of a “realm” and then it is said of it
that it is “essence” (p. 54), after which it is swiftly transformed into
Spectre No. 6: “essences”. To perceive and to recognise them, and
them alone, is religion. “Their realm” (of essences) “is — a realm of
essences” (p. 54). Here there suddenly appears for no apparent
reason

Spectre No. 7: the God-Man, Christ. Of him Stirner is able to say
that he was “corpulent” . If Saint Max does not believe in Christ, he at
least believes in his “actual corpus”. According to Stirner, Christ
introduced great distress into history, and our sentimental saint
relates with tears in his eyes “how the strongest Christians have
racked their brains in order to comprehend him” — indeed,

“there has never been a spectre that caused such mental anguish, and no shaman,
spurring himself into wild frenzy and nerve-racking convulsions, can have suffered
such agony as Christians have suffered on account of this most incomprehensible
spectre”.

Saint Max sheds a sympathetic tear at the grave of the victims of
Christ and then passes on to the “horrible being”.

Spectre No. 8, man. Here our bold writer is seized with
immediate “horror” — “he is terrified of himself”, he sees in every
man a “frightful spectre”, a “sinister spectre.” in which something
“stalks” (pp. 55, 56). He feels highly uncomfortable. The split
between phenomenon and essence gives him no peace. He is like
Nabal, Abigail’s husband, of whom it is written that his essence too
was separated from his phenomenal appearance: “And there was a
man in Maon, whose possessions^ were in Carmel” . (1 Samuel 25 : 2.) But

a In German a pun on the word Wesen (essence) — in Luther’s Bible translation
Wesen is used in its old meaning: “possession”. — Ed.

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159

in the nick of time, before the “mental anguish” causes Saint Max in
desperation to put a bullet through his head, he suddenly
remembers the ancients who “took no notice of anything of the kind
in their slaves”. This leads him to

Spectre No. 9, the national spirit (p. 56), about which too Saint Max,
who can no longer be restrained, indulges in “frightful” fantasies, in
order to transform

Spectre No. 10, “ everything ”, into an apparition and, finally, where
all enumeration ends, to hurl together in the class of spectres the
“holy spirit”, truth, justice, law, the good cause (which he still cannot
forget) and half a dozen other things completely foreign to one an-
other.

Apart from this there is nothing remarkable in the whole chapter
except that Saint Max’s faith moves an historical mountain. That is to
say, he utters the opinion (p. 56):

“Only for the sake of a supreme being has anyone ever been worshipped, only as a
spectre has he been regarded as a sanctified, i.e.” (that is!) “protected and recognised
person.”

If we shift this mountain, moved by faith alone, back into its prop-
er place, then “it will read”: Only for the sake of persons who are
protected, i.e., who protect themselves, and who are privileged, i.e.,
who seize privileges for themselves, have supreme beings been
worshipped and spectres sanctified. Saint Max imagines, for
example, that in antiquity, when each people was held together by
material relations and interests, e.g., by the hostility of the various
tribes, etc., when owing to a shortage of productive forces each had
either to be a slave or to possess slaves, etc., etc., when, therefore,
belonging to a particular people was a matter of “the most natural
interest” ( Wigand , p. [162]) — that then it was only the concept peo-
ple, or “nationality” that gave birth to these interests from itself; he
imagines also that in modern times, when free competition and
world trade gave birth to hypocritical, bourgeois cosmopolitanism
and the notion of man— that here, on the contrary, the later
philosophical construction of man brought about those relations as
its “revelations” (p. 51). It is the same with religion, with the realm of
essences, which he considers the unique realm, but concerning the
essence of which he knows nothing, for otherwise he must have
known that religion as such has neither essence, nor realm. In
religion people make their empirical world into an entity that is only
conceived, imagined, that confronts them as something foreign. This
again is by no means to be explained from other concepts, from
“self-consciousness” and similar nonsense, but from the entire
hitherto existing mode of production and intercourse, which is just

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

as independent of the pure concept as the invention of the self-acting
mule 3 and the use of railways are independent of Hegelian
philosophy. If he wants to speak of an “essence” of religion, i.e., of a
material basis of this inessentiality , b then he should look for it neither
in the “essence of man”, nor in the predicates of God, but in
the material world which each stage of religious development finds
in existence (cf. above Feuerbach ). c

All the “spectres” which have filed before us were concepts. These
concepts — leaving aside their real basis (which Stirner in any case
leaves aside) — understood as concepts inside consciousness, as
thoughts in people’s heads, transferred from their objectivity back
into the subject, elevated from substance into self-consciousness,
are — whimsies or fixed ideas.

Concerning the origin of Saint Max’s history of ghosts, see
Feuerbach in Anekdota II, p. 66. d where it is stated:

“Theology is belief in ghosts. Ordinary theology, however, has its ghosts in the
sensuous imagination, speculative theology has them in non-sensuous abstraction.”

And since Saint Max shares the belief of all critical speculative
philosophers of modern times that thoughts, which have become
independent, objectified thoughts — ghosts — have ruled the world
and continue to rule it, and that all history up to now was the history
of theology, nothing could be easier for him than to transform
history into a history of ghosts. Sancho’s history of ghosts, therefore,
rests on the traditional belief in ghosts of the speculative
philosophers.

b) Whimsy

“Man, there are spectres in your head!... You have a fixed idea!”
thunders Saint Max at his slave Szeliga. “Don’t think I am joking,”
he threatens him. Don’t dare to think that the solemn “Max Stirner”
is capable of joking.

The man of God is again in need of his faithful Szeliga in order to
pass from the object to the subject, from the apparition to the
whimsy.

Whimsy is the hierarchy in the single individual, the domination

3 The English term is used in the manuscript . — Ed

b In German a pun on the words Wesen — essence, substance, being — and
Unwesen — literally inessence. Unwesen can be rendered in English as disorder,
nuisance, confusion or, in a different context, monster. — Ed.
c See this volume, pp. 53-54. — Ed.

Ludwig Feuerbach, “Vorlaufige Thesen zur Reformation der Philo-
sophic”. — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

161

of thought “in him over him”. After the world has confronted
the fantasy-making youth (of page 20) as a world of his “feverish
fantasies”, as a world of ghosts, “the offsprings of his own head”
inside his head begin to dominate him. The world of his feverish
fantasies — this is the step forward he has made— now exists as the
world of his deranged mind. Saint Max — the man who is confronted
by “the world of the moderns” in the form of the fantasy-making
youth — has necessarily to declare that “almost the whole of mankind
consists of veritable fools, inmates of a mad-house” (p. 57).

The whimsy which Saint Max discovers in the heads of people is
nothing but his own whimsy — the whimsy of the “saint” who views
the world sub specie aeterni a and who takes both the hypocritical
phrases of people and their illusions for the true motives of their ac-
tions; that is why our naive, pious man confidently pronounces the
great proposition: “Almost all mankind clings to something higher”

(P- 57).

“Whimsy” is “a fixed idea”, i.e., “an idea which has subordinated
man to itself” or — as is said later in more popular form — all kinds of
absurdities which people “ have stuffed into their heads”. With the
utmost ease, Saint Max arrives at the conclusion that everything that
has subordinated people to itself — for example, the need to produce
in order to live, and the relations dependent on this — is such an
“absurdity” or “ fixed idea”. Since the child’s world is the only “world
of things”, as we learned in the myth of “a man's life”,
everything that does not exist “for the child” (at times also for the
animal) is in any case an “idea” and “easily also” a “fixed idea”. We
are still a long way from getting rid of the youth and the child.

The chapter on whimsy aims merely at establishing the existence
of the category of whimsy in the history of “man”. The actual
struggle against whimsy is waged throughout the entire “book” and
particularly in the second part. Hence a few examples of whimsy
can suffice us here.

On page 59, Jacques le bonhomme believes that

“our newspapers are full of politics, because they are in the grip of the delusion that
man was created in order to become a zoon politikon” h .

Hence, according to Jacques le bonhomme, people engage in
politics because our newspapers are full of them! If a church father
were to glance at the stock exchange reports of our newspapers, he
could not judge differently from Saint Max and would have to say:
these newspapers are full of stock exchange reports because they are

a Under the aspect of eternity (see Benedictus Spinoza, Ethica, Pars quinta). — Ed.

Political animal — thus Aristotle defines man at the beginning of De republica.
Book I. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

in the grip of the delusion that man was created in order to engage in
financial speculation. Thus, it is not the newspapers that possess
whimsies, but whimsies that possess “Stirner”.

Stirner explains the condemnation of incest and the institutions of
monogamy from “the holy”, “they are the holy”. If among the
Persians incest is not condemned, and if the institution of polygamy
occurs among the Turks, then in those places incest and polygamy
are “the holy”. It is not possible to see any difference between these
two “holies” other than that the nonsense with which the Persiahs
and Turks have “stuffed their heads” is different from that with
which the Christian Germanic peoples have stuffed their
heads. — Such is the church father s manner of “detaching himself”
from historv “in good time”. — Jacques le bonhomme has so little
inkling of the real, materialist causes for the condemnation of
polygamy and incest in certain social conditions that he considers this
condemnation to be merely the dogma of a creed and in common
with every philistine imagines that when a man is imprisoned for a
crime of this kind, it means that “moral purity” is confining him in a
“house of moral correction” (p. 60) — just as jails in general seem to
him to be houses for moral correction — in this respect he is at a lower
level than the educated bourgeois, who has a better understanding of
the matter — cf. the literature on prisons. “Stirner’s” “jails” are the
most trite illusions of the Berlin burgher which for him, however,
hardly deserve to be called a “house of moral correction”.

After Stirner, with the help of an “episodically included”
“historical reflection”, has discovered that

“a had to come to pass that the whole man with all his abilities would prove to be
religious” (p. 64) “so, too, in point of fact” “it is not surprising” — “for we are now so
thoroughly religious”— “that” the oath “of the members o f the jury condemns us to death
and that bv means of the ‘official oath’ the police constable, as a good Christian, has us
put in the clink”.

When a gendarme stops him for smoking in the Tiergarten, 52 the
cigar is knocked out of his mouth not bv the royal Prussian
gendarme who is paid to do so and shares in the monev from fines,
but by the “official oath”. In precisely the same way the power of the
bourgeois in the jury court becomes transformed for Stirner — owing
to the pseudo-hoiv appearance which the amis du commerce assume
here — into the power of making a vow% the power of the oath, into
the “ho/\”. “Verily, I say unto you: I have not found so great faith,
no, not in Israel.” (Matthew 8: 10.)

“For some persons a thought becomes a maxim, so that it is not the person who
possesses the maxim, but rather the latter that possesses him, and with the maxim he
again acquires a firm standpoint.” But “it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that
runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy” (Romans 9: 16).

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

163

Therefore Saint Max has on the same page to receive several
thorns in the flesh 3 and must give us a number of maxims: firstly,
the maxim [to recognise] no maxims, with which goes, secondly, the
maxim not to have any firm standpoint; thirdly, the maxim
“although we should possess spirit, spirit should not possess us”; and
fourthly, the maxim that one should also be aware of one’s flesh, “for
only by being aware of his flesh is man fully aware of himself, and
only by being fully aware of himself, is he aware or rational”.

C. The Impurely Impure History of Spirits
a) Negroes and Mongols

We now go back to the beginning of the “unique” historical
scheme and nomenclature. The child becomes the Negro, the
youth — the Mongol. See “The Economy of the Old Testament”.

“The historical reflection on our Mongolhood, which I shall include episodically at
this point, I present without any claim to thoroughness or even to authenticity, but solely
because it seems to me that it can contribute to clarifying the rest” (p. 87).

Saint Max tries to “clarify” for himself his phrases about the child
and the youth by giving them world-embracing names, and he tries
to “clarify” these world-embracing names by replacing them with his
phrases about the child and the youth. “The Negroid character
represents antiquity, dependence on things ” (child); “the Mongoloid
character — the period of dependence on thoughts, the Christian
epoch” ( the youth). (Cf. “The Economy of the Old Testament”.) “The
following words are reserved for the future: I am owner of the world
of things, and I am owner of the world of thoughts ” (pp. 87, 88). This
“future” has already happened once, on page 20, in connection with
the man, and it will occur again later, beginning with page 226.

First “ historical reflection without claim to thoroughness or even to
authenticity”: Since Egypt is part of Africa where Negroes live, it
follows that “included” “in the Negro era” (p. 88) are the
“campaigns of Sesostris”, which never took place, and the “signifi-
cance of Egypt” (the significance it had also at the time of the
Ptolemies, Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt, Mohammed Ali, the
Eastern question, the pamphlets of Duvergier de Haurannes, etc.),
“and of North Africa in general” (and therefore of Carthage,
Hannibal’s campaign against Rome, and “easily also”, the signifi-
cance of Syracuse and Spain, the Vandals, Tertullian, the Moors, A1
Hussein Abu Ali Ben Abdallah Ibn Sina, piratical states, the French

2 Corinthians 12:7. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

in Algeria, Abd-el-Kader, Pere Enfantin 53 and the four new toads of
the Charivari ) (p. 88). Consequently, Stirner clarifies the campaigns
of Sesostris, etc., by transferring them to the Negro era, and he
clarifies the Negro era by “episodically including” it as a historical
illustration of his unique thoughts “about our childhood years”.

Second “ historical reflection “To the Mongoloid era belong the
campaigns of the Huns and Mongols up to the Russians” (and
Wasserpolacken 54 ); thus here again the campaigns of the Huns and
Mongols, together with the Russians, are “clarified” by their
inclusion in the “Mongoloid era”, and the “Mongoloid era” — by
pointing out that it is the era of the phrase “dependence on
thoughts”, which we have already encountered in connection with
the youth.

Third “ historical reflection ”:

In the Mongoloid era the “value of my ego cannot possibly be put at a high levei
because the hard, diamond of the non-ego is too high in price, because it is still too gritty
and impregnable for it to be absorbed and consumed by my ego. On the contrary,
people are simply exceptionally busv crawling about on this static world, this
substance, like parasitic animalcules on a body from whose juices they extract
nourishment, but nevertheless do not devour the body. It is the bustling activity of
noxious insects, the industriousness of Mongols. Among the Chinese indeed every thing
remains as of old, etc.... Therefore ” (because among the Chinese everything remains as
of old) “in our Mongol era every change has only been reformatory and corrective,
and not destructive, devouring or annihilating. The substance, the object remains. All
our industriousness is only the activity of ants and the jumping of fleas ... juggling on
the tightrope of the objective”, etc. (p. 88. Cf. Hegel, Philosophie der Geschichte, pp. 1 13,
118, 119 (unsoftened substance), p. 140, etc., where China is understood as “substan-
tiality”).

We learn here, therefore, that in the true Caucasian era people
will be guided by the maxim that the earth, “substance”, the “ob-
ject”, the “static” has to be devoured, “consumed”, “annihilated”,
“absorbed”, “destroyed”, and along with the earth the solar system
that is inseparable from it. World-devouring “Stirner” has already
introduced us to the “reformatory or corrective activity” of the
Mongols as the youth’s and Christian’s “plans for the salvation and
correction of the world” on page 36. Thus we have still not advanced a
step. It is characteristic of the entire “unique” conception of history
that the highest stage of this Mongol activity earns the title of
“scientific” — from which already now the conclusion can be drawn,
which Saint Max later tells us, that the culmination of the Mongolian
heaven is the Hegelian kingdom of spirits.

Fourth “ historical reflection ”, The world on which the Mongols crawl
about is now transformed by means of a “flea jump” into the
“positive”, this into the “precept”, and, with the help of a paragraph
on page 89. the precept becomes “morality”, “Morality appears in its

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

165

first form as custom” — hence it comes forward as a person, but in a
trice it becomes transformed into a sphere:

“To act in accordance with the morals and customs of one’s country means here ”
(i.e., in the sphere of morality) "to be moral”. “Therefore” (because this occurs in the
sphere of morality as a custom) “pure, moral behaviour in the most straightforward form is
practised in ... Chinal ”

Saint Max is unfortunate in his examples. On page 1 16 in just the
same way he attributes to the North Americans the “religion of
honesty”. He regards the two most rascally nations on earth, the
patriarchal swindlers — the Chinese, and the civilised swindlers — the
Yankees, as “straightforward”, “moral” and “honest”. If he had
looked up his crib he could have found the North Americans classed
as swindlers on page 81 of the Philosophie der Geschichte and the
Chinese ditto on page 130.

“One” — that friend of the saintly worthy man — now helps him to
arrive at innovation, and from this an “and” brings him back to
custom, and thus the material is prepared for achieving a master
stroke in the

Fifth historical reflection: “There is in fact no doubt that by means of
custom man protects himself against the importunity of things, of
the world” — for example, from hunger;

“and” — as quite naturally follows from this —

“founds a world of his own” — which “Stirner” has need of now —
“in which alone he feels in his native element and at home”, — “alone” ,
after he has first by “custom” made himself “at home” in the
existing “world” —

“i.e., builds himself a heaven” — because China is called the Celestial
Empire.

“For indeed heaven has no other significance than that of being the real
homeland of man” — in this context, however, it signifies the imagined
unreality of the real homeland —

“where nothing alien any longer prevails upon him”, i.e., where what is
his own prevails upon him as something alien, and all the rest of the
old story. “Or rather”, to use Saint Bruno’s words, or “it is easily
possible”, to use Saint Max’s words, that this proposition should read
as follows:

Stirner’s proposition without claim to
thoroughness or even to authenticity

“There is in fact no doubt that by
means of custom man protects himself
against the importunity of things, of the
world, and founds a world of his own., in
which alone he feels in his native element
and at home, i.e., builds himself a heaven.

Clarified proposition

“There is in fact no doubt” that
because China is called the Celestial
Empire, because “Stirner” happens to be
speaking of China and as he is “accus-
tomed” by means of ignorance “to
protect himself against the importunity
of things, of the world, and to found a

] 60 Kan Marx and Frederick Engels

Fo- indeed ‘heaven' has no other sig- world o r his own, in which alone he

nmcance than that oi being tne reai ieeis in ins native element and at

nomeland of man where nothing alier home’" — therefore he "builds himself a

anv longer prevails upon him and rules heaven’ out of the Chinese Celestial

over him no earth!' influence anv Empire. "For indeed’" the importunitv

lonsrev estranges him from himself, in of the world, of things “has no other

short, wnere earthiv dross is thrown significance than that of being the real”

aside and the struggle against the world hell oi" the unique, ‘ in which’ even -

nas come to an end, where, therefore, thing prevails upon him ana rules over

nothing is forbidden him anv more” him” as something “alien”, bur which he

sP- ^ • is able to transform into a “heaven’ bv

“estranging himself” from al! “earthiv
influences’ , historical tacvs and connec-
tions, and hence no longer thinks them
strange: “in short”, it is a sphere ‘ where
the earthiv”, the historical ‘dross is
thrown aside”, and where Stirner “does
not find’ in the ‘ end” “of the world
any more “struggle” — and thereby
everything has been said.

Sixth “ historical reflection”. On paee 90, Stirner imagines that

‘ in Cmna everytning is provided for; no matter what happens, the Chinese always knows
how he should behave, and he has no need to decide according to circumstances; no
unforeseen event will overthrow his celestial cairn .

Nor anv British bombardment either — he knew exactly “how he
should behave’ 7 , particularly in regard to the unfamiliar steamships
and shrapnel-bombs, 5 '

Saint Max extracted that from Hegel s Philosophie der Geschichte,
pages 118 and 127. to which, of course he had to add something
unique, in order to achieve his reflection as given above.

' Consequently' continues Saint Max, ‘ mankind climbs the first rung of the ladder
of education bv means of custom, and since t: imagines that bv gaining culture, it has
gained heaven, the realm oi culture or second nature it actually mounts the first rung
oi the heaveniv ladder” .p, 90;.

Consequently”, t.e., because Hegel oegins history with China
and because “the Chinese does not lose ms equanimity”, “Stirner”
transforms mankind into a person who ‘ mounts the first rung of the
ladder of culture’ and indeed does so “bv means of custom”,
because China has no other meaning for Stirner than that of being
the embodiment of “custom”. Now if is onn a question for our zealot
against the holv of transforming the “ladder” into a “heaveniv lad-
der”, since China is also called the Celestial Empire. “Since mankind
imagines” (“wherefrom” does Stirner ‘ know everything that”
mankind imagines, see Wigand, page 189) — and this ought to have
been proved by Stirner — firstly that it transforms “culture” into the
“heaven of culture”, and secondly that it transforms the “heaven of

The German ideoiogv. The Leipzig Council. 111. Saint -> •;

1 07

culture” into the ‘ culture of heaver.” — an alleged notion on the
part oi : mankind which appears on page 91 as a notion of Stirner’s
and therebv receives its correct expression) — ; so it actually mounts
the first rung of the heavenh ladder”. Since it imagines that it
mounts the first rung of the heavenh ladder — so — it mounts ir
actually ! “ Since ” the vouth” “imagines’ that he becomes pure spirit,
he does actually become such; See the ‘ vouth” and the “Christian”
on the transition from the world of things to the world of the spirit,
where the simple formula for this heavenly ladder of unique” ideas
already occurs.

Seventh historical reflection . page 90. “If Mongolism” (it follows
immediately after the heavenlv ladder, whereby “Stirner”, through
the alleged notion on the part of mankind, was abie to ascertain the
existence of a spiritual essence [ Wesen ]}, “if Mongolism has
established the existence of spiritual beings [Wesen]" (rather — if
“Stirner” has established his fancv about the spiritual essence of the
Mongols). “ then the Caucasians have fought for thousands of years
against these spiritual beings, in order to get to the bottom of them”.
(The youth, who becomes a man and tries all the time” “to
penetrate behind thoughts”, the Christian who “tries all the time”
“to explore the depths of divinity ”.') Since the Chinese have noted
the existence of God knows what spiritual beings (“Stirner” does nor
note a single one, apart from his heavenly ladder) — so for thousands
of years the Caucasians have to wrangle with ‘ these” Chinese
“spiritual beings”; moreover, two lines below Stirner puts on record
that they actually “stormed the Mongolian heaven, the tien . and
continues: “When will they destroy this heaven, when will they
finally become actual Caucasians and find themselves^"

Here we have the negative unity, already' seen earlier as man, now
appearing as the ‘actual Caucasian”, i.e., not Negroid, no:
Mongolian, but as the Caucasian Caucasian . This latter, therefore., a ,
a concept, as essence, is here separated from the actual Caucasians, is
counterposed to them as the ‘ideal of the Caucasian”, as a
vocation” in which thev should “find themselves”, as a “destiny”, a
“task”, as “the holy”, as “the hob” Caucasian, “the perfect’
Caucasian, "who indeed” is the Caucasian “in heaven — God".

“In the sedulous struggle of the Mongolian race, men had built a
heaven” — so “Stirner” believes (p. 91), forgetting that actual Mon-
gols are much more occupied with sheep than with heaven a —
when the people of the Caucasian stock, so long as they ... have

a In German a pun based on the words die Hdmmei — the '-sheep, and die
Himmei — the heavens. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

to do with heaven ... undertook the business of storming heaven.” Had
built a heaven, when ... so long as they have... [they] undertook. The
unassuming “historical reflection” is here expressed in a consecutio
temporuvrf which also does not “lay claim” to classic form “or even”
to grammatical correctness; the construction of the sentences
corresponds to the construction of history. “Stirner’s” “claims” “are
restricted to this” and “thereby achieve their final goal”.

Eighth historical reflection , which is the reflection of reflections, the
alpha and omega of the whole of Stirner’s history: Jacques le
bonhomme, as we have pointed out from the beginning, sees in all the
movement of nations that has so far taken place merely a sequence of
heavens (p. 91), which can also be expressed as follows: successive
generations of the Caucasian race up to the present day did nothing
but squabble about the concept of morality (p. 92) and “their activity
has been restricted to this” (p. 91). If they had got out of their heads
this unfortunate morality, this apparition, they would have achieved
something; as it was, they achieved nothing, absolutely nothing, and
have to allow Saint Max to set them a task as if they were schoolboys.
It is completely in accordance with his view of history that at the
end (p. 92) he conjures up speculative philosophy so that “in it this
heavenly kingdom, the kingdom of spirits and spectres, should find
its proper order” — and that in a later passage speculative philosophy
should be conceived as the “perfect kingdom of spirits”.

Why it is that for those who regard history in the Hegelian manner
the result of all preceding history was finally bound to be the
kingdom of spirits perfected and brought into order in speculative
philosophy — the solution of this secret “Stirner” could have very
simply found by recourse to Hegel himself. To arrive at this result
“the concept of spirit must be taken as the basis and then it must be
shown that history is the process of the spirit itself” ( Geschichte der
Philosophic, III, p. 91). After the “concept of spirit” has been
imposed on history as its basis, it is very easy, of course, to “show”
that it is to be discovered everywhere, and then to make this as a
process “find its proper order”.

After making everything “find its proper order”, Saint Max can
now exclaim with enthusiasm: “To desire to win freedom for the
spirit, that is Mongolism”, etc. (cf. p. 17: “To bring to light pure
thought, etc. — that is the joy of the youth”, etc.), and can declare
hypocritically: “ Hence it is obvious that Mongolism ... represents
non-sensuousness and unnaturalness”, etc. — when he ought to have
said: it is obvious that the Mongol is only the disguised youth who,

a Sequence of tenses. — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

169

being the negation of the world of things, can also be called
“unnaturalness”, “non-sensuousness”, etc.

We have again reached the point where the “youth” can pass into
the “man”: “But who will transform the spirit into its nothing? He,
who by means of the spirit represented nature as the futile, the finite,
the transitory” (i.e., imagined it as such — and, according to page 16
et seq., this was done by the youth, later the Christian, then the
Mongol, then the Mongoloid Caucasian, but properly speaking only
by idealism), “he alone can also degrade the 'spirit” (namely in his
imagination) “to the same futility” (therefore the Christian, etc.? No,
exclaims “Stirner” resorting to a similar trick as on pages 19-20 in
the case of the man). “I can do it, each of you can do it who operates
and creates” (in his imagination) “as the unrestricted ego”, “in a
word, the egoist can do it” (p. 93), i.e., the man, the Caucasian
Caucasian, who therefore is the perfect Christian, the true Christian,
the holy one, the embodiment of the holy.

Before dealing with the further nomenclature, we also “should
like at this point to include an historical reflection” on the origin
of Stirner’s “historical reflection about our Mongolism”; our
reflection differs, however, from Stirner’s in that it definitely “lays
claim to thoroughness and authenticity”. His whole historical
reflection, just as that on the “ancients”, is a concoction out of Hegel.

The Negroid state is conceived as “the child” because Hegel says
on page 89 of his Philosophie der Geschichte:

“Africa is the country of the childhood of history.” “In defining the African”
(Negroid) “spirit we must entirely discard the category of universality ” (p. 90)— i.e.,
although the child or the Negro has ideas, he still does not have the idea. “Among the
Negroes consciousness has not yet reached a firm objective existence, as for example
God, law, in which man would have the perception of his essence ” ... “thanks to which,
knowledge of an absolute being is totally absent. The Negro represents natural man in
all his lack of restraint” (p. 90). “Although they must be conscious of their dependence
on the natural” (on things, as “Stirner” says), “this, however, does not lead them to
the consciousness of something higher” (p. 91).

Here we meet again all Stirner’s determinations of the child and
the Negro — dependence on things, independence of ideas and
especially of “the idea”, “the essence”, “the absolute” (holy)
“being”, etc.

He found that in Hegel the Mongols and, in particular, the
Chinese appear as the beginning of history and since for Hegel, too,
history is a history of spirits (but not in such a childish way as with
“Stirner”), it goes without saying that the Mongols brought the spirit
into history and are the original representatives of everything
“sacred”. In particular, on page 110, Hegel describes the “ Mongolian
kingdom” (of the Dalai-Lama) as the “ ecclesiasticar realm, the

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

“kingdom of theocratic rule”, a “spiritual, religious kingdom” — in
contrast to the worldly empire of the Chinese. “Stirner”, of course,
has to identify China with the Mongols. In Hegel, on page 140, there
even occurs the “Mongolian principle ” from which “Stirner” derived
his “ Mongolism ”. Incidentally, if he really wanted to reduce the
Mongols to the category of “idealism”, he could have “found
established” in the Dalai-Lama system and Buddhism quite different
“spiritual beings” from his fragile “heavenly ladder”. But he did not
even have time to look properly at Hegel’s Philosophie der Geschichte.
The peculiarity and uniqueness of Stirner’s attitude to history
consists in the egoist being transformed into a “clumsy” copier of
Hegel.

b) Catholicism and Protestantism
(Cf. “The Economy of the Old Testament”)

What we here call Catholicism, “Stirner” calls the “Middle Ages”,
but as he confuses (as “in everything”) the pious, religious character
of the Middle Ages, the religion of the Middle Ages, with the actual,
profane Middle Ages in flesh and blood, we prefer to give the matter
its right name at once.

“The Middle Ages” were a “ lengthy period, in which people were content with the
illusion of having the truth” (they did not desire or do anything else), “without
seriously thinking about whether one must be true oneself in order to possess the
truth”. — “In the Middle Ages people ” (that is, the whole of the Middle Ages)
“mortified the flesh, in order to become capable of assimilating the holy” (p. 108).

Hegel defines the attitude to the divine in the Catholic church by
saying

“that people’s attitude to the absolute was as to something purely external”
(Christianity in the form of externality) ( Geschichte der Philosophie, III, p. 148, and
elsewhere). Of course, the individual has to be purified in order to assimilate the truth,
but “this also occurs in an external way, through redemptions, fasts, self-flagellations,
visits to holy places, pilgrimages” (ibid., p. 140).

“Stirner” makes this transition by saying:

“In the same way, too, as people strain their eyes in order to see a distant object ... so
they mortified the flesh, etc.”

Since in “Stirner’s” “book” the Middle Ages are identified with
Catholicism, they naturally end with Luther ( p. 108). Luther himself
is reduced to the following definition, which has already cropped up
in connection with the youth, in the conversation with Szeliga and
elsewhere:

“Man, if he wants to attain truth, must become as true as truth itself. Only he who
already has truth in faith can participate in it.”

Concerning Lutheranism, Hegel says:

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

171

“The truth of the gospel exists oniv in the true attitude to it.... The essential
attitude of the spirit exists onlv for the spirit.... Hence the attitude of the spirit to the
content is that although the content is essential, it is equally essential that the hoiy and
consecrating spirit should stand in relation to this content” ( Gesctnchte der Philosophie,
III, p. 234; “This then is the Lutheran faith — his” q.e., man's) "faith is required of
turn ami it alone can truly be taken into account'' (ibid., p. 230;. “Luther ... affirms that
the divine is divine om\ insofar as it is apprehended in this subjective spirituaiitv o:
faith” (ibid., p. 138). “The doctrine of the’ (Catholic) “church is truth as existent truth”
( Philosophie der Religion II, p. 331).

“Stirne^” continues:

“Accordingly, with Luther the knowledge arises that truth, because it is thought,
exists oniv for the thinking man and this means that with regard to his object-
thought — man must adopt a totaliv different standpoint, a pious” (per uppos.j.

‘ scientific standpoint, or that of thinking” tp. 1 10).

Apart from the repetition which “Stirner” again “includes” here,
only the transition from faith to thinking deserves attention. Hegel
makes the transition in the following way:

“But this spirit” (namely, the holy and consecrating spirit) ‘ is. secondly, essentially
also thinking spirit. Thinking a* such must also nave its development in it”, etc.
([Geschichte der Philosophie,] p. 234).

“Stirner” continues:

“7’his thought” (“that I am stoirit, spirit aione”) “pervades the historv of the
Reformation down to the present day” *p. 111,.

From the sixteenth century onwards, no other historv exists for
“Stirner” than the history of the Reformation — and the iatter only in
the interpretation in which Hegel presents it.

Saint Max has again displayed his gigantic faith. He has again
taken as literal truth all the illusions of German speculative
philosophy; indeed, he has made them still more speculative, still
more abstract. For him there exists only the history of religion and
philosophy — and this exists for him oniv through the medium of
Hegel, who with the passage of time has become the universal crib,
the reference source for all the latest German speculators about
principles and manufacturers of svstems.

Catholicism =attitude to truth as thing, child, Negro, the “an-
cient”.

Protestantism = attitude to truth in the spirit, youth, Mongol, the
“modern”.

The whole scheme was superfluous, since all this was already
present in the section on “spirit”.

As already mentioned in “The Economy of the Old Testament”, it

J G.W.F. Hegel, Vorlesungen fiber die Philosophie der Religion. — Ed.

172

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

is now possible to make the child and the youth appear again in new
“transformations” within Protestantism, as “Stirner” actually does
on page 112, where he conceives English, empirical philosophy as
the child, in contrast to German, speculative philosophy as the youth.
Here again he copies out Hegel, who here, as elsewhere in the
“book”, frequently appears as “ one ”.

“One” — i.e., Hegel — “expelled Bacon from the realm of philosophy.” “And,
indeed, what is called English philosophy does not seem to have got any farther than
the discoveries made by so-called clear intellects such as Bacon and Hume” (p. 1 12).

Hegel expresses this as follows:

“Bacon is in fact the real leader and representative of what is called philosophy in
England and beyond which the English have by no means gone as yet” ( Geschichte der
Philosophie, III, p. 254).

The people whom “Stirner” calls “clear intellects” Hegel (ibid.,
p. 255) calls “educated men of the world” — Saint Max on one occa-
sion even transforms them into the “simplicity of childish nature”,
for the English philosophers have to represent the child. On the same
childish grounds Bacon is not allowed to have “concerned himself
with theological problems and cardinal propositions”, regardless of
what may be said in his writings (particularly De Augmentis
Scientiarum , a Novum Organum and the Essays' 3 ). On the other hand,
“German thought ... sees life only in cognition itself” (p. 1 12), for it is
the youth. Ecce iterum Crispinus! c

How Stirner transforms Descartes into a German philosopher, the
reader can see for himself in the “book”, p. 112.

D. Hierarchy

In the foregoing presentation Jacques le bonhomme conceives
history merely as the product of abstract thoughts — or, rather, of his
notions of abstract thoughts — as governed by these notions, which, in
the final analysis, are all resolved into the “holy”. This domination of
the “holy”, of thought, of the Hegelian absolute idea over the
empirical world he further portrays as a historical relation existing at
the present time, as the domination of the holy ones, the ideologists,
over the vulgar world — as a hierarchy. In this hierarchy, what
previously appeared consecutively exists side by side, so that one of the
two co-existing forms of development rules over the other. Thus, the

a Francis Bacon, De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum. — Ed.

Francis Bacon, The Essays or Councels. Civill and Morall. — Ed.

And there is Crispinus again — the opening words of Juvenal’s fourth satire. — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

173

youth rules over the child, the Mongol over the Negro, the modern
over the ancient, the selfless egoist ( citoyen ) over the egoist in the
usual sense of the word (bourgeois), etc. — see “The Economy of the
Old Testament”. The “destruction” of the “world of things” by the
“world of the spirit” appears here as the “domination” of the “world
of thoughts” over the “world of things”. The outcome, of course, is
bound to be that the domination which the “world of thoughts”
exercises from the outset in history is at the end of the latter also
presented as the real, actually existing domination of the think-
ers — and, as we shall see, in the final analysis, as the domination of
the speculative philosophers — over the world of things, so that Saint
Max has only to fight against thoughts and ideas of the ideologists
and to overcome them, in order to make himself “possessor of the
world of things and the world of thoughts”.

“ Hierarchy is the domination of thought, the domination of the spirit. We are still
hierarchical to this day, we are under the yoke of those who rely on thoughts, and
thoughts” — who has failed to notice it long ago? — “are the holy ” (p. 97). (Stirner has
tried to safeguard himself against the reproach that in his whole book he has only been
producing “thoughts”, i.e., the “holy”, by in fact nowhere producing any thoughts in
it. Although in the Wigand periodical he ascribes to himself “virtuosity in thinking”,
i.e., according to his interpretation, virtuosity in the fabrication of the “holy” — and
this we shall concede him.) — “Hierarchy is the supreme domination of spirit” (p. 467).
— “The medieval hierarchy was only a weak hierarchy, for it was forced to allow
all kinds of profane barbarism to exist unrestricted alongside it” (“how Stirner knows
so much about what the hierarchy was forced to do”, we shall soon see), “and onlv the
Reformation steeled the power of the hierarchy” (p. 110). “Stirner” indeed thinks
that “the domination of spirits was never before so all-embracing and omnipotent” as
after the Reformation; he thinks that this domination of spirits “instead of divorcing
the religious principle from art, sta? ■■ and science, on the contrary, raised these who !! \
from actuality into the kingdom of the spirit and made them religious”.

This view of modern history merely dilates upon speculative
philosophy’s old illusion of the domination of spirit in history.
Indeed, this passage even shows how pious Jacques le bonhomme in
all good faith continually takes the world outlook derived from
Hegel, and which has become traditional for him, as the real world,
and “manoeuvres” on that basis. What may appear as “his own” and
“unique” in this passage is the conception of this domination of the
spirit as a hierarchy — and here, again, we will “include” a brief
“historical reflection” on the origin of Stirner’s “hierarchy”.

Hegel speaks of the philosophy of hierarchy in the following
“transformations” :

“We have seen in Plato’s Republic the idea that philosophers should govern; now”
(in the Catholic Middle Ages) “the time has come when it is affirmed that the spiritual
should dominate-, but the spiritual has acquired the meaning that the clerical, the clergy,
should dominate. Thus, the spiritual is made a special being, the individual”

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

( Geschichte der Philosophic, III, p. 132). — “Thereby actuality, the mundane, is forsaken by
God ... a few individual persons are holy, the others unholy” (ibid., p. 136).
“Godforsakenness” is more closely defined thus: “All these forms” (family, work,
political life, etc.) “are considered nugatory, unholy” (Philosophie der Religion, II,
p. 343). — “It is a union with worldliness which is unreconciled, worldliness which is
crude in itself” (for this Hegel elsewhere also uses the word “barbarism”; cf., for
example. Geschichte der Philosophie, III, p. 136) “and, being crude in itself, is
simply subjected to domination.” ( Philosophie der Religion, II, pp. 342, 343). — “This
domination” (the hierarchy of the Catholic church) “is, therefore, a domination of
passion, although it should be the domination of the spiritual” ( Geschichte der
Philosophie, III, p. 134). — “ The true domination of the spirit, however, cannot be
domination of the spirit in the sense that what opposes it should be something
subordinate” (ibid., p. 131). — “The true meaning is that the spiritual as such”
(according to “Stirner” the “holy”) “should be the determining factor, and this has
been so until our times-, thus, we see in the French Revolution” ( following in the wake of
Hegel, “Stirner” sees it) “that the abstract idea should dominate : state constitutions and
laws should be determined by it, it should constitute the bond between people, and
people should be conscious that that which they hold as valid are abstract ideas, liberty and
equality, etc.” ( Geschichte der Philosophie, III, p. 132). The true domination of spirit as
brought about by Protestantism, in contrast to its imperfect form in the Catholic
hierarchy, is defined further in the sense that “the earthly is made spiritual in
itself ” ( Geschichte der Philosophie, III, p. 185); “that the divine is realised in the sphere
of actuality” (the Catholic Godforsaken ness of actuality, therefore, ceases to exist —
Philosophie der Religion, II, p. 344); that the “contradiction” between holiness
and worldliness “is resolved in morality” ( Philosophie der Religion, II, p. 343);
that “moral institutions” (marriage, the family, the state, earning one’s livelihood,
etc.) are “ divine , holy ” ( Philosophie der Religion, II, p. .344).

Hegel expresses this true domination of spirit in two forms:

“State, government, law, property, civic order” (and, as we know from his other
works, art. science, etc., as well), “all this is the religious... emerging in the form
of the finite” (Geschichte der Philosophic, III, p. 185).

And, finally, this domination of the religious, the spiritual, etc., is
expressed as the domination of philosophy:

“Consciousness of the spiritual is now” (in the eighteenth centurv) “essentiallv the
foundation, and thereby domination has passed to philosophy” ( Philosophie der Geschichte,
p. 440).

Hegel, therefore, ascribes to the Catholic hierarchy of the Middle
Ages the intention of wanting “to be the domination of spirit” and
thereupon regards it as a restricted imperfect form of this
domination of spirit, the culmination of which he sees in Protestant-
ism and its alleged further development. However unhistorical this
may be, nevertheless, Hegel is sufficiently historically-minded not to
extend the use of the name “hierarchy” beyond the bounds of the
Middle Ages. But Saint Max knows from this same Hegel that the
later epoch is the “truth” of the preceding one; hence the epoch of
the perfect domination of spirit is the truth of that epoch in which
the domination of spirit was as yet imperfect, so that Protestantism
is the truth of hierarchy and therefore true hierarchy. Since,

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175

however, only true hierarchy deserves to be called hierarchy,
it is clear that the hierarchy of the Middle Ages had to be
“weakly”, and it is all the easier for Stirner to prove this since in the
passages given above and in hundreds of other passages from Hegel
the imperfection of the domination of spirit in the Middle Ages is
portrayed. He only needed to copy these out, the whole of his “ own ”
work consisting in substituting the word “hierarchy” for “domina-
tion of spirit”. There was no need for him even to formulate the
simple argument by means of which domination of spirit as such is
transformed by him into hierarchy, since it has become the fashion
among German theoreticians to give the name of the cause to the
effect and, for example, to put back into the category of theology
everything that has arisen out of theology and has not yet fully
attained the height of the principles of these theoreticians — e.g.,
Hegelian speculation, Straussian pantheism, etc. — a trick especially
prevalent in 1842. From the above-quoted passages it also follows
that Hegel: 1) appraises the French Revolution as a new and more
perfect phase of this domination of spirit; 2) regards philosophers
as the rulers of the world of the nineteenth century; 3) maintains
that now only abstract ideas have validity among people; 4) that he
already regards marriage, the family, the state, earning one's
livelihood, civic order, property, etc., as “divine and holy”, as the
“ religious principle ” and 5) that morality as worldly sanctity or as
sanctified worldliness is represented as the highest and ultimate
form of the domination of spirit over the world — all these things are
repeated word for word in “Stirner”.

Accordingly there is no need to say or prove anything more
concerning Stirner’s hierarchy, apart from why Saint Max copied out
Hegel — a fact, however, for the explanation of which further
material data are necessarv, and whicji, therefore, is only explicable
for those who are acquainted with the Berlin atmosphere. It is
another question how the Hegelian idea of the domination of spirit
arose, and about this see what has been said above. 3

Saint Max’s adoption of Hegel’s world domination of the
philosophers and his transformation of it into a hierarchy are due to
the extremely uncritical credulity of our saint and to a “holy” or
unholy ignorance which is content with “seeing through” history
(i.e., with glancing through Hegel’s historical writings) without trou-
bling to “know” many “things” about it. In general, he was bound to
be afraid that as soon as he “learned” he would no longer be able to
“abolish and dissolve” (p. 96), and, therefore, remain stuck in the

a See this volume, pp. 59-62. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

“bustling activity of noxious insects” — a sufficient reason not to
“proceed” to the “abolition and dissolution” of his own ignorance.

If, like Hegel, one designs such a system for the first time, a system
embracing the whole of history and the present-day world in all its
scope, one cannot possibly do so without comprehensive, positive
knowledge, without great energy and keen insight and without
dealing at least in some passages with empirical history. On the other
hand, if one is satisfied with exploiting an already existing pattern,
transforming it for one’s “own” purposes and demonstrating this
conception of one’s own by means of isolated examples (e.g.,
Negroes and Mongols, Catholics and Protestants, the French
Revolution, etc.) — and this is precisely what our warrior against the
holy does — then absolutely no knowledge of history is necessary.
The result of all this exploitation inevitably becomes comic; most of
all comic when a jump is made from the past into the immediate
present, examples of which we saw already in connection with
“ whims v”. a

As for the actual hierarch v of the Middle Ages, we shall merely
note here that it did not exist for the people, for the great mass of
human beings. For the great mass only feudalism existed, and
hierarchy onlv existed insofar as it was itself either feudal or
anti-feudal (within the framework of feudalism). Feudalism itself had
entirely empirical relations as its basis. Hierarchy and its struggle
against feudalism (the struggle of the ideologists of a class against the
class itself) are only the ideological expression of feudalism and of
the struggles developing within feudalism itself — which include also
the struggles of the feudally organised nations among themselves.
Hierarchy is the ideal form of feudalism; feudalism is the political
form of the medieval relations of production and intercourse.
Consequently, the struggle of feudalism against hierarchy can only
be explained by elucidating these practical material relations. This
elucidation of itself puts an end to the previous conception of history
which took the illusions of the Middle Ages on trust, in particular
those illusions which the Emperor and the Pope brought to bear in
their struggle against each other.

Since Saint Max merely reduces the Hegelian abstractions about
the Middle Ages and hierarchy to “pompous words and paltry
thoughts”, there is no need to examine in more detail the actual,
historical hierarchy.

From the above it is now clear that the trick can also be reversed
and Catholicism regarded not just as a preliminary stage, but

a See this volume, pp. 160-63. — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

177

also as the negation of the real hierarchy; in which case Catholi-
cism =negation of spirit, non-spirit, sensuousness, and then
one gets the great proposition of Jacques le bonhomme — that the
Jesuits “saved us from the decay and destruction of sensuousness”
(p. 1 18). What would have happened to “us” if the “destruction’ ^f
sensuousness had come to pass, we do not learn. The whole material
movement since the sixteenth century, which did not save “us” from
the “decay” of sensuousness, but, on the contrary, developed
“sensuousness” to a much wider extent, does not exist for
“Stirner” — it is the Jesuits who brought about all that. Compare,
incidentally, Hegel’s Philosophic der Geschichte, p. 425.

By carrying over the old domination of the clerics to modern
times. Saint Max interprets modern times as “ clericalism and then
by regarding this domination of the clerics carried over to modern
times as something distinct from the old medieval clerical domina-
tion, he depicts it as domination of the ideologists, as “scholasticism ” .
Thus clericalism= hierarchy as the domination of the spirit,
scholasticism = the domination of the spirit as hierarchy.

“Stirner” achieves this simple transition to clericalism — which is no
transition at all — by means of three weighty transformations.

Firstly, he “has” the “concept of clericalism” in anyone “who lives
for a great idea, for a good cause” (still the good cause!), “for a
doctrine, etc.”

Secondly, in his world of illusion Stirner “comes up against” the
“age-old illusion of a world that has not yet learned to dispense with
clericalism”, namely — “to live and create for the sake of an idea, etc.”

Thirdly, “it is the domination of the idea, i.e., clericalism”, that is:
“Robespierre, for example” (for example!), “Saint-Just, and so on”
(and so on!) “were out-and-out priests”, etc. All three transforma-
tions in which clericalism is “discovered”, “encountered” and
“called upon” (all this on p. 100), therefore, express nothing more
than what Saint Max has already repeatedly told us, namely, the
domination of spirit, of the idea, of the holy, over “life” (ibid.).

After the “domination of the idea, i.e., clericalism” has thus been
foisted upon history, Saint Max can, of course, without difficulty find
this “clericalism” again in the whole of preceding history, and thus
depict “Robespierre, for example, Saint-Just, and so on” as priests
and identify them with Innocent III and Gregory VII, and so all
uniqueness vanishes in the face of the unique. All of them, properly
speaking, are merely different names, different disguises for one
person, “clericalism”, which made all history from the beginning of
Christianity. As to how, with this sort of conception of history, “all
cats become grey”, since all historical differences are “abolished”

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

and “resolved” in the “notion of clericalism” — as to this. Saint Max
at once gives us a striking example in his “Robespierre, ror example,
Saint- just, and so on”. Here we are first given Robespierre as an
“example” of Saint-Just, and Saint-just — as an ‘ and-so-on” of
Robespierre. It is then said:

“These representatives of holy interests are confronted by a world of innumerable
'personal', earthly interests.”

Bv whom were they confronted? By the Girondists and Ther-
midorians, who (see “for example” R. Levasseur s Memoires, “and so
on”, “i.e.”, Nougaret, Histoire des prisons ; Barere; “ Deux amis de la
libei t''” 1 { et du commerce} -. Montgailiard, Histoire de Prance; Madame
Roland, Appel a ta posterite; T. B. Louvet’s Memoires and even the
disgusting Essais histonques by Beaulieu, etc., etc., as well as all the
proceedings before the revolutionary tribunal, ‘ and so on”)
constantly reproached them, the real representatives ot revolution-
ary power, i.e., of the class which alone was trulv revolutionary, the
‘ innumerable” masses, for violating “sacred interests”, the constitu-
tion, ireedom, equality, the rights of man, republicanism, law, samte
proprietep “tor example” the division of powers, humanity, morality,
moderation, “and so on”. They were opposed by all the priests, who
accused them of violating all the main and secondary items of the
religious and moral catechism (see “for example” Histoire du clerge de
Prance pendant la revolution, by M. R. c , Paris, libraire catholique, 1828,
“and so on”). The historical comment ot the bourgeois that during
the regne de la terreur “Robespierre, for example, Saint-just, and so
on” cut off the heads of konnetes gens t; see the numerous writings of
the simpleton Monsieur Peltier . “for example”. La conspiration ae
Robespierre bv Montjoie ‘ and so on”) is expressed bv Saint Max in the
following transformation:

“because the revolutionary nriests and school-masters served Man, they cut the
tnroats ol mer ’

This, of course, saves Saint Max the trouble of wasting even one
“unique” little word about the actual, empirical grounds for the
cutting off of heads — grounds which were based on extremely
worldly interests, though not, of course, of the stockjobbers, but of
the “innumerable” masses. An earlier “priest”, Spinoza, already in
the seventeenth centurv had the brazen audacity to act the “strict

a Two friends of freedom i,and of commerce). — Ed.

Sacred properly. — Ed.
c HippoJvte Regnier d’Estourbet. — Ed.

Respectable people.— -Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

179

school-master” of Saint Max, by saying: “Ignorance is no argu-
ment.” 3 Consequently Saint Max loathes the priest Spinoza to such
an extent that he accepts his anti-cleric, the priest Leibniz, and for all
such astonishing phenomena as the terror, “for example”, the
cutting off of heads, “and so on”, produces “sufficient grounds”,
viz., that “the ecclesiastics stuffed their heads with something of the
kind” (p. 98).

Blessed Max, who has found sufficient grounds for everything (“I
have now found the ground into which my anchor is eternally
fastened, ” b in the idea, “for example”, in the “clericalism”, “and so
on” of “Robespierre, for example, Saint-Just, and so on”, George
Sand, Proudhon, the chaste Berlin seamstress, 0 etc.) — this blessed
Max “does not blame the class of the bourgeoisie for having asked its
egoism how far it should give way to the revolutionary idea as such”.
For Saint Max “the revolutionary idea” which inspired the habits
bleus 57 and honnetes gens of 1789 is the same “idea” as that of the
sansculottes of 1793, the same idea concerning which people
deliberate whether to “give way” to it — but no further “space
can be given” d to any “idea” about this point.

We now come to present-day hierarchy, to the domination of the
idea in ordinary life. The whole of the second part of “the book” is
filled with struggle against this “hierarchy”. Therefore we shall deal
with it in detail when we come to this second part. But since Saint
Max, as in the section on “whimsy”, takes delight in anticipating his
ideas here and repeats what comes later in the beginning, as he
repeats the beginning in what comes later, we are compelled already
at this point to note a few examples of his hierarchy. His method of
writing a book is the unique “egoism” which we find in the whole
book. His self-delight stands in inverse proportion to the delight
experienced by the reader.

Since the middle class demand love for their kingdom, their
regime, they want, according to Jacques le bonhomme, to “establish
the kingdom of love on earth” (p. 98). Since they demand respect for
their domination and for the conditions in which it is exercised, and
therefore want to usurp domination over respect, they demand,
according to this worthy man, the domination of respect as such, their
attitude towards respect is the same as towards the holy spirit
dwelling within them (p. 95). Jacques le bonhomme, with his faith

a Benedictus Spinoza, Ethica, Pars prima. Appendix. — Ed.

b The words are from a Protestant hymn. — Ed.

0 Marie Wilhelmine Dahnhardt. — Ed.

d In German a pun: Raum geben — to give way, to yield to, and to give space to
something. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

that can move mountains, takes as the actual, earthly basis of the
bourgeois world the distorted form in which the sanctimonious and
hypocritical ideology of the bourgeoisie voices their particular
interests as universal interests. Why this ideological delusion assumes
precisely this form for our saint, we shall see in connection with
“political liberalism”. 3

Saint Max gives us a new example on page 115, speaking of the
family. He declares that, although it is very easy to become
emancipated from the domination of one’s own family, nevertheless,
“refusal of allegiance easily arouses pangs of conscience”, and so
people retain family affection, the concept of the family, and
therefore have the “holy conception of the family”, the “holy”
(p. 116).

Here again our good man perceives the domination of the holy
where entirely empirical relations dominate. The attitude of the
bourgeois to the institutions of his regime is like that of the Jew to the
law; he evades them whenever it is possible to do so in each
individual case, but he wants everyone else to observe them. If the
entire bourgeoisie, in a mass and at one time, were to evade
bourgeois institutions, it would cease to be bourgeois — a conduct
which, of course, never occurs to the bourgeois and by no means
depends on their willing or running. 58 The dissolute bourgeois
evades marriage and secretly commits adultery; the merchant evades
the institution of property by depriving others of property by
speculation, bankruptcy, etc.; the young bourgeois makes himself
independent of his own family, if he can by in fact abolishing the
family as far as he is concerned. But marriage, property, the family
remain untouched in theory, because they are the practical basis on
which the bourgeoisie has erected its domination, and because in
their bourgeois form they are the conditions which make the
bourgeois a bourgeois, just as the constantly evaded law makes the
religious Jew a religious Jew. This attitude of the bourgeois to the
conditions of his existence acquires one of its universal forms in
bourgeois morality. One cannot speak at all of the family “as such’
Historically, the bourgeois gives the family the character of the
bourgeois family, in which boredom and money are the binding link,
and which also includes the bourgeois dissolution of the family,
which does not prevent the family itself from always continuing to
exist. Its dirty existence has its counterpart in the holy concept of it in
official phraseology and universal hypocrisy. Where the family is
actually abolished, as with the proletariat, just the opposite of what

a See this volume, pp. 193-97. — Ed.

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181

“stirner” thinks takes place. There the concept of the family does not
exist at all, but here and there family affection based on extremely
real relations is certainly to be found. In the eighteenth century the
concept of the family was abolished by the philosophers, because the
actual family was already in process of dissolution at the highest
pinnacles of civilisation. The internal family bond, the separate
components constituting the concept of the family were dissolved,
for example, obedience, piety, fidelity in marriage, etc.; but the real
body of the family, the property relation, the exclusive attitude in
relation to other families, forced cohabitation — relations determined
by the existence of children, the structure of modern towns, the
formation of capital, etc. — all these were preserved, although with
numerous violations, because the existence of the family is made
necessary by its connection with the mode of production, which
exists independently of the will of bourgeois society. That it was
impossible to do without it was demonstrated in the most striking
way during the French Revolution, when for a moment the family
was as good as legally abolished. The family continues to exist even in
the nineteenth century, only the process of its dissolution has become
more general, not on account of the concept, but because of the
higher development of industry and competition; the family still
exists although its dissolution was long ago proclaimed by French
and English socialists and this has at last penetrated also to the
German church fathers, by way of French novels.

One other example of the domination of the idea in everyday life.
Since school-masters may be told to find consolation for their scanty
pay in the holiness of the cause they serve (which could only occur in
Germany), Jacques le bonhomme actually believes that such talk is
the reason for their low salaries (p. 100). He believes that “the.holy”
in the present-day bourgeois world has an actual money value, he
believes that the meagre funds of the Prussian state (see, inter alia,
Browning on this subject 3 ) would be so increased by the abolition of
“the holy” that every village school-master could suddenly be paid a
ministerial salary.

This is the hierarchy of nonsense.

The “keystone of the magnificent cathedral” — as the great
Michelet b puts it — of hierarchy is “sometimes” the work of “One”

a G. Browning, The domestic and financial Condition of Great Britain; preceded by a
Brief Sketch of her Foreign Policy; and of the Statistics and Politics of France, Russia, Austria
and Prussia . — Ed.

b Carl Ludwig Michelet, Geschichte der letzten Systeme der Philosophie in Deutschland
von Kant bis Hegel . — Ed.

r\.arj Marx and Frederick Engels

1 8 .

“Ove sometime 1 ; divides people into two classes, the educated and the uneducated.”
'One sometimes divides aoes into two classes, the taiied and the tailless.) “The former
insofar as the' - were worthv of tneir name, occupied themselves witn thoughts, with
the spirit.” Thev 4 dominated in the post-Chrisuan epoch and tor their thoughts they
demanded ... respect” The uneducated (the animal, the child, the Negro; are
‘ powerless” against thoughts and ‘ are dominated bv them. That is the meaning of
nierarchv ”

The ‘ educated’’ (the youth, the Mongol, the modern) are,
therefore, again onh occupied with “spirit”, pure thought, etc.; they
are metaphysicians by profession, in the final analysis Hegelians.
“Hence” the “uneducated” are the non-Hegehans. a Hegei was
indubitabiv ‘ the most educated” Hegelian and therefore in his case
it must “become apparent what a longing for things particularly tne
most educated man possesses”. The point is that the ' educated’ anti
uneducated” are within themselves in conflict with each other
indeed, in every man the ‘ uneducated’ is in conflict with the
“educated”. And since the greatest longing for things, i.e., for that
which belongs to the ‘ uneducated’ , becomes apparent m Hegel, ir
also becomes apparent here that “the most educated” man is at the
same time “the most uneducated’

"There” {in Hegel; ‘reality should be completer- in accordance with thought and
no concept be without realise

This should read: there the ordinary idea of reality should receive
its complete philosophical expression, while Hegei imagines, on the
contrary, that “consequently” every philosophical expression creates
the reality that is in accordance with it. Jacques ie bonhomme takes
Hegel's illusion about his own philosophy ior the genuine com of
Hegelian pfniosophv

The Hegelian philosophy, which in the form of the domination of
the Hegelians over the non-Hegelians appears as the crown of the
hierarchy, now conquers the last world empire.

" Hegel’ , svsiem was >.he supreme despotism and autocracy ot thought, the
omnipotent e and aimightiness of the spin ” t> 9 7

Here, therefore, we find ourselves in the realm of spirits of
Hegelian philosophy, which stretches from Berlin to Halle and
Tubingen, the realm of spirits whose history was written by Herr
Bavrhoffer" and lor which the great Michelet collected the
statistical uafa.

Here the authors ironically use Berlin dialect words for educated, uneducated
and most educated (Jebildete, Unjebildete, Allerjebildetste). — Ed.

Karl Theodor Bavrhoffer, Die Idee und Geschichte der Philosophie. — Ed.

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183

The preparation for this realm of spirits was the French
Revolution, which “ did nothing but transform things into ideas about
things ” (p. 115; cf. above Hegel on the revolution, p.

“So people remained citizens” (in “Stirner”, this occurs earlier,
but “what Stirner says is not what he has in mind, and what he has in
mind cannot be said”, Wigand, p. 149) and “lived in reflection , they
had their eye on an object, before which” ( per appos .) “they felt
reverence and fear”. “Stirner” says in a passage on page 98: “The
road to hell is paved with good intentions.” But we say: the road to
the unique is paved with bad concluding clauses b , with appositions,
which are his “heavenly ladder” borrowed from the Chinese, and his
“rope of the objective” (p. 88) on which he makes his “flea-
jumps”. In accordance with this, for “modern philosophy or modern
times” — since the emergence of the realm of spirits modern times
are indeed nothing but modern philosophy — it is an easy matter to
“transform the existing objects into notional objects, i.e., into con-
cepts”, page 114, a work which Saint Max continues.

We have already seen our knight of the rueful countenance even
“before the mountains were brought forth”/ which he later moved
by his faith, right at the beginning of his book, galloping headlong
towards the great result of his “magnificent cathedral”. His
“donkey”, apposition, could not jump swiftly enough for him; now,
at last, on page 114, he has reached his goal and by means of a
mighty “or” has transformed modern times into modern philosophy.

Thereby ancient times (i.e., the ancient and modern, Negroid and
Mongolian but, properly speaking, only pre-Stirnerian times)
“reached their final goal”. We can now reveal why Saint Max gave
the title “Man” to the whole of the first part of his book and made
out his entire history of miracles, ghosts and knights to be the history
of “man”. The ideas and thoughts of people were, of course, ideas
and thoughts about themselves and their relationships, their
consciousness of themselves and of people in general — for it was the
consciousness not merely of a single individual but of the individual
in his interconnection with the whole of society and about the whole
of the society in which they lived. The conditions, independent of
them, in which they produced their life, the necessary forms of
intercourse connected herewith, and the personal and social
relations thereby given, had to take the form — insofar as they were

a See this volume, pp. 174-75. — Ed.

b In German a pun: Vorsatze — intentions, and Nachsatze — concluding clauses,
conclusions. — Ed.

c Psalms 90:2. — Ed.

8—2086

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

expressed in thoughts — of ideal conditions and necessary relations,
i.e., they had to be expressed in consciousness as determina-
tions arising from the concept of man as such , from human essence,
from the nature of man, from man as such. What people were, what
their relations were, appeared in consciousness as ideas of man as
such , of his modes of existence or of his immediate conceptual
determinations. So, after the ideologists had assumed that ideas and
thoughts had dominated history up to now, that the history of these
ideas and thoughts constitutes all history up to now, after they had
imagined that real conditions had conformed to man as such and his
ideal conditions, i.e., to conceptual determinations, after they had
made the history of people’s consciousness of themselves the basis of
their actual history, after all this, nothing was easier than to call the
history of consciousness, of ideas, of the holy, of established con-
cepts — the history of “man” and to put it in the place of real history.
The only distinction between Saint Max and all his predecessors
is that he knows nothing about these concepts — even in their arbitrary
isolation from real life, whose products they were — and his trivial
creative work in his copy of Hegelian ideology is restricted to
establishing his ignorance even of what he copies. — It is already
evident from this how he can counterpose the history of the real
individual in the form of the unique to his fantasy about the history of
man.

The unique history takes place at the beginning in the Stoa in
Athens, later almost wholly in Germany, and finally at the
Kupfergraben 59 in Berlin, where the despot of “modern philosophy
or modern times” set up his imperial residence. That already shows
how exclusively national and local is the matter dealt with. Instead of
world history, Saint Max gives a few and, what is more, extremely
meagre and biased comments on the history of German theology and
philosophy. If on occasion we appear to go outside Germany, it is
only in order to cause the deeds and thoughts of other peoples, e.g.,
the French Revolution, to “reach their final goal” in Germany,
namely, at the Kupfergraben. Only national-German facts are given,
they are dealt with and interpreted in a national-German manner,
and the result remains a national-German one. But even that is not
enough. The views and education of our saint are not only German,
but of a Berlin nature through and through. The role allotted to
Hegelian philosophy is that which it plays in Berlin, and Stirner
confuses Berlin with the world and world history. The “youth” is a
Berliner; the good citizens that we encounter throughout the book
are Berlin beer-drinking philistines. With such premises for the
starting-point, it is natural that the result arrived at is merely one

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185

confined within the national and local framework. “Stirner” and his
whole philosophical fraternity, among whom he is the weakest and
most ignorant member, afford a practical commentary to the valiant
lines of the valiant Hoffmann von Fallersleben:

In Germany alone, in Germany alone.

Would I for ever live. a

The local Berlin conclusion of our valiant saint — that in Hegelian
philosophy the world has “all gone” — enables him now without
much expense to arrive at a universal empire of his “own”. The
Hegelian philosophy transformed everything into thought, into the
holy, into apparition, into spirit, into spirits, into spectres. “Stirner”
will fight against them, he will conquer them in his imagination and
will erect on their dead bodies his “own”, “unique”, “corporeal”
empire, the empire of the “whole fellow”.

“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers,
against the rulers o( the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places”
(Ephesians 6:12).

Now “Stirner” has his “feet shod with the preparation” for waging
the fight against thoughts. He has no need first to “take the shield of
faith”, for he has never laid it down. Armed with the “helmet” of
disaster and the “sword” of spiritlessness (see ibid . b ), he goes into
battle. “And it was given unto him to make war with the holy” but
not “to overcome” it. (Revelation of St. John 13:7.)

5. “ Stirner ” Delighted in His Construction

We now find ourselves again exactly where we were on page 19 in
connection with the youth, who became the man, and on page 90 in
connection with the Mongoloid Caucasian, who was transformed
into the Caucasian Caucasian and “found himself”. We are,
therefore, at the third self-finding of the mysterious individual
whose “arduous life struggle” Saint Max depicts for us. Only the
whole story is now behind us, and, in view of the extensive material
we have worked through, we must take a retrospective look at the
gigantic corpse of the ruined man.

Though on a later page, where he has long ago forgotten his
history, Saint Max asserts that “genius has long since been regarded
as the creator of new world -historic productions” (p. 214), we have

a From the poem Auf der Wanderung by Hoffmann von Fallersleben. — Ed.
b Ephesians 6 : 15, 16, 17 (paraphrased). — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

already seen that even his bitterest enemies cannot revile his history
on that score, at any rate, for in it no individuals, let alone geniuses,
make their appearance, but only ossified, crippled thoughts and
Hegelian changelings.

Repetitio est mater studiorum . a Saint Max, who expounded his whole
history of “philosophy or time” only in order to find an opportunity
for a few hurried studies of Hegel, finally repeats once again his
whole unique history. However, he does it with a turn towards
natural history, offering us important information about “unique”
natural science, the reason being that for him, whenever the “world”
has to play an important role, it immediately becomes transformed
into nature. “Unique” natural science begins at once with the
admission of its impotence. It does not examine the actual relation of
man to nature, determined bv industry and natural science, but
proclaims a fantastic relation of man to nature.

“How little can man conquer! He has to allow the sun to trace its course, the sea to
roll its waves, the mountains to tower to the sky” (p. 122).

Saint Max who, like all saints, loves miracles, but can only perform
a logical miracle, is annoyed because he cannot make the sun dance
the cancan, he grieves because he cannot still the ocean, he is
indignant because he must allow the mountains to tower to the sky.
Although on page 124 the world already becomes “prosaic” at the
end of antiquity, it is still, for our saint, highly unprosaic. For him it
still is the “sun” and not the earth that traces its course, and to his
sorrow he cannot a la Joshua command “sun, stand thou still”. b On
page 123, Stirner discovers that

at the end of the ancient world, “spirit” “again foamed and frothed over irresistib-
ly because gases ” (spirits) “developed within it and, after the mechanical impact from
outside became ineffective, chemical tensions, which stimulate in the interior, began
to come into wonderful play”.

This sentence contains the most important data of the “unique”
philosophy of nature, which on the previous page had already ar-
rived at the conclusion that for man nature is the “unconquerable”.
Earthly physics knows nothing about a mechanical impact which
becomes ineffective — unique physics alone has the merit of this
discovery. Earthly chemistry knows no “gases” which stimulate
“chemical tensions” and, what is more, “in the interior”. Gases
which enter into new combinations, into new chemical relations, do
not stimulate any “tensions”, but at most lead to a fall of tension,

* Repetition is the mother of learning. — Ed.
Joshua 10 : 12. — Ed.

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insofar as they pass mto a liquid state of aggregation and thereby
their volume decreases to something less than one-thousandth of
their former volume. If Saint Max feels “tensions” “in” his own
“interior” due to “gases”, these are highly “mechanical impacts”,
and by no means “chemical tensions”. They are produced by a
chemical transformation, determined by physiological causes, of
certain mixtures into others, whereby part of the constituents of the
former mixture becomes gaseous, therefore, occupies a larger
volume and, in the absence of space for it, causes a “mechanical
impact” or pressure towards the outside. [That] these nonexistent
“chemical tensions” “come” into extremely “wonderful play” in
Saint Max’s “interior”, namely, this time in his head, “we see" from
the role they play in “unique” natural science. Incidentally, it is to be
desired that Saint Max would no longer withhold from the profane
natural scientists what nonsense he has in mind with the crazy
expression “chemical tensions”, which moreover “stimulate in the
interior” (as though a “mechanical impact” on the stomach does not
“stimulate it in the interior” as well).

Saint Max wrote his “unique” natural science only because on this
occasion he was unable to touch on the ancients in decent fashion
without at the same time letting fall a few words about the “world of
things”, about nature.

At the end of the ancient world the ancients, we are assured here,
are all transformed into Stoics, “whom no collapse of the world”
(how many times is it supposed to have collapsed?) “could put out of
countenance” (p. 123). Thus, the ancients become Chinese, who also
“cannot be thrown down from the heavens of their tranquillity by
any unforeseen event” (or idea 3 ) (p. 90). Indeed, Jacques le
bonhomme seriously believes that against the last of the ancients “the
mechanical impact from outside became ineffective”. How far this
corresponds to the actual situation of the Romans and Greeks at the
end of the ancient world, to their complete lack of stability and
confidence, which could hardly oppose any remnant of vis inertiae to
the “mechanical impact” — on this point compare, inter alia, Lucian.
The powerful mechanical shocks which the Roman empire received
as a result of its division among several Caesars and their wars
against one another, as a result of the colossal concentration of
property, particularly landed property, in Rome, and the decrease in
Italy’s population caused by this, and as a result of the [pressure of
the] Huns and Teutons — these shocks, in the opinion of our saintly

a In the German original a pun: Fall — event— and FAnfall, which can mean
idea, brain wave, invasion or collapse. — Kd.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

historian, “became ineffective”; only the “chemical tensions”, only
the “gases” which Christianity “stimulated in the interior” over-
threw the Roman Empire. The great earthquakes [in the West] and
in the East, and other “mechanical impacts” which buried hundreds
of thousands of people under the [ruins] of their towns and [which
by no] means left the consciousness of people unchanged, were
presumably, according to “Stirner”, also “ineffective” or were
chemical tensions. And “in fact ” (!) “ancient history ends in this, that
I have made the world my property” — which is proved by means of
the biblical saying: “All things are delivered unto me” (i.e., Christ)
“of my Father.” 3 Here, therefore, I = Christ. In this connection,
Jacques le bonhomme cannot refrain from believing the Christian
that he could move mountains, etc., if he “only wanted to”. As a
Christian he proclaims himself the lord of the world, but he is this
only as a Christian ; he proclaims himself the “owner of the world”.
“Thereby egoism won its first full victory, since I elevated myself to
be the owner of the world” (p. 124). In order to rise to the level of
the perfect Christian, Sdrner’s ego had only to carry through the
struggle to become poor in spirit as well (which he succeeded in doing
even before the mountains arose). “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for
theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” 5 Saint Max has reached perfection
as regards poverty of spirit and even boasts of it in his great rejoicing
before the Lord.

Saint Max, poor in spirit, believes in the fantastic gas formations of
the Christians arising from the decomposition of the ancient world.
The ancient Christian owned nothing in this world and was,
therefore, satisfied with his imaginary heavenly property and his
divine right to ownership. Instead of making the world the
possession of the people, he proclaimed himself and his ragged
fraternity to be “God’s own possession” (1 Peter 2:9). According
to “Stirner”, the Christian idea of the world is the world into which
the ancient world is actually dissolved, although this is at most [a
world] of fantasy into which the world of ancient ideas has [been
transformed] and in which the Christian [by faith] can move
mountains, can feel [all-powerful] and press forward to a position
where the “mechanical impact is ineffective”. Since for “Stirner”
people are no longer determined by the [external] world, are no
longer driven forward by the mechanical impact of the need to
produce, since, in general, the mechanical impact, and with it the
sexual act as well, has ceased to operate, it is only by a miracle that

a . Matthew 11 : 27 .— Ed.
b Matthew 5 : 3.— Ed.

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189

they have been able to continue to exist. Of course, for German prigs
and school-masters with a gaseous content like that of “Stirner”, it is
far easier to be satisfied with the Christian fantasy about proper-
ty — which is truly nothing but the property of Christian fan-
tasy — than to describe the transformation of the real property
relations and production relations of the ancient world.

That same primitive Christian who, in the imagination of Jacques
le bonhomme, was the owner of the ancient world, actually belonged
for the most part to the world of owners; he was a slave and could be
sold on the market. But “Stirner”, delighted in his construction,
irrepressibly continues his rejoicing.

“The first property, the first splendour has been won!” (p. 124).

In the same way, Stirner’s egoism continues to gain property and
splendour and to achieve “complete victories”. The theological
attitude of the primitive Christian to the ancient world is the perfect
prototype of all his property and all his splendour.

The following are the grounds given for this property of the
Christian:

“The world has lost its divine character ... it has become prosaic, it is my property,
which I dispose of as I (viz., the spirit) choose” (p. 124).

This means: the world has lost its divine character, therefore, it is
freed from my fantasies for my own consciousness; it has become
prosaic, consequently its relation to me is prosaic and it disposes of
me in the prosaic way it favours, by no means to please me. Apart
from the fact that “Stirner” here actually thinks that in ancient times
the prosaic world did not exist and the divine principle held sway in
the world, he even falsifies the Christian concept, which continually
bemoans its impotence in relation to the world, and itself depicts its
victory over the world in its fantasy as merely an ideal one, by
transferring it to the day of judgment. Only when a great secular
power took possession of Christianity and exploited it, whereupon,
of course, it ceased to be unworldly, could Christianity imagine itself
to be the owner of the world. Saint Max ascribes to the Christian the
same false relation to the ancient world as he ascribes to the youth
with regard to the “world of the child”; he puts the egoist in the
same relation to the world of the Christian as he puts the man to the
world of the youth.

The Christian has now nothing more to do than to become poor in
spirit as quickly as possible and perceive the world of spirit in all its
vanity — just as he did with the world of things — in order to be able to
“dispose as he chooses” of the world of spirit also, whereby he
becomes a perfect Christian, an egoist. The attitude of the Christian

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

to the ancient world serves, therefore, as the standard for the
attitude of the egoist to the modern world. The preparation for this
spiritual poverty was the content of “almost two thousand years” of
life — a life whose main epochs, of course, took place only in
Germany.

“After various transformations the holy spirit in the course of time became the absolute
idea, which again in manifold refractions split up into the various ideas of love of
mankind, civic virtue, rationality, etc.” (pp. 125, 126).

The German stay-at-home again turns the thing upside-down.
The ideas of love of mankind, etc. — coins whose impressions had
already been totally worn away, particularly owing to their great
circulation in the eighteenth century — were recast by Hegel in the
sublimate of the absolute idea, but after this remindng they were just
as little successful in retaining their value abroad as Prussian paper
money.

The consistent conclusion — which has already appeared again and
again — of Stirner’s view of history is as follows:

“Concepts should play the decisive role everywhere, concepts should regulate life,
concepts should rule. That is the religious world to which Hegel gave systematic
expression” (p. 126),

and which our good-natured philistine so much mistakes for
the real world that on the following page (p. 127) he can say:

“Now nothing but spirit rules in the world.”

Stuck fast in this world of illusion, he can (on p. 128) build first of
all an “altar” and then “erect a church” “round this altar”, a church
whose “walls” have legs for making progress and “move ever farther
forward”. “Soon this church embraces the whole earth.” He, the
unique, and Szeliga, his servant, stand outside, they “wander round
these walls, and are driven out to the very edge”. “Howling with
agonising hunger”, Saint Max calls to his servant: “One step more
and the world of the holy has conquered.” But Szeliga suddenly
“ sinks into the outermost abyss”, which lies above him — a literary
miracle! For, since the earth is a sphere, the abyss can only lie above
Szeliga as soon as the church embraces the whole earth. So he
reverses the laws of gravity, ascends backwards into heaven and
thereby reflects honour on “unique” natural science, which is all the
easier for him since, according to page 126, “the nature of the thing
and the concept of relation” are a matter of indifference to
“Stirner”, “do not guide him in his treatment or conclusion”, and
the “relationship into which” Szeliga “entered” with gravity “is itself
unique” by virtue of Szeliga’s “uniqueness”, and by no means
“depends” on the nature of gravity or on how “others”, for instance,
natural scientists, “classify it”. “Stirner” moreover objects to

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Szeliga’s “action being separated from the real” Szeliga and
“assessed according to human standards”.

Having thus arranged for decent accommodation in heaven for his
faithful servant, Saint Max passes on to the subject of his own
passion. On page 95 he discovers that even the “gallows” has the
“colour of the holy”; “people loathe coming into contact with it,
there is something uncanny, i.e., unfamiliar, strange about it”. In
order to transcend this strangeness of the gallows, he transforms it
into his own gallows, which he can only do by hanging himself on it.
The lion of Juda makes also this last sacrifice to egoism. 3 The holy
Christian allows himself to be nailed to the cross, not to redeem the
cross, but to redeem people from their impiety; the unholy Christian
hangs himself on the gallows in order to redeem the gallows from
holiness or to redeem himself from the strangeness of the gallows.

“The first splendour, the first property has been won, the first
complete victory achieved!” The holy warrior has now conquered
history, he has transformed it into thoughts, pure thoughts, which
are nothing but thoughts — and at the end of time only a host of
thoughts confront him. And so Saint Max, having taken his
“gallows” on his back, just like an ass that carries a cross, and his
servant Szeliga, who was welcomed in heaven with kicks and has
returned to his master with his head hanging, set out to fight against
this host of thoughts or, rather, against the mere halo of these
thoughts. This time it is Sancho Panza, full of moral sayings, maxims
and proverbs, who takes on himself the struggle against the holy, and
Don Quixote plays the role of his pious and faithful servant. The
honest Sancho fights just as bravely as the caballero Manchego h d id in
the old days, and like him does not fail several times to mistake a
herd of Mongolian sheep for a swarm of spectres. The plump
Maritornes “in the course of time, after various transformations in
manifold refractions”, is transformed into a chaste Berlin seam-
stress/ dying of anaemia, a subject on which Saint Sancho composes
an elegy, one which causes all young graduates and Guards lieu-
tenants to remember Rabelais’ statement that the world-liberating
“soldier’s prime weapon is the flap of his trousers”. d

Sancho Panza achieves his heroic feats by perceiving the entire
opposing host of thoughts in its nullity and vanity. All his great deed

3 Gf. Revelation of John 5:5. — Ed.

h Knight of La Mancha, i.e., Don Quixote. — Ed.

c Marie Wilhelmine Dahnhardt. — Ed.

d Cf. the heading of Chapter 8, Book 3 of Rabelais’ Gargantua and Pantagruel. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

is confined to mere perception which in the end leaves everything
existing as it was, changing only his conception, and that not even of
things, but of philosophical phrases about things.

Thus, after the ancients have been presented realistically as child,
Negro, Negroid Caucasians, animal, Catholics, English philosophy,
the uneducated, non-Hegelians, and the world of things, and the
moderns have been presented idealistically as youth, Mongol,
Mongoloid Caucasians, man, Protestants, German philosophy, the
educated, Hegelians, and the world of thoughts — after everything
has happened that was from time immemorial decided in the Coun-
cil of Guardians, the time has at last arrived. The negative unity of
the ancient and the modern, which has already figured as the man,
the Caucasian, the Caucasian Caucasian, the perfect Christian, in
servant’s clothing, seen “through a glass darkly” (1 Corinthians
13:12), can now, after the passion and death of Stirner on the gallows
and Szeliga’s ascent to heaven in full glory, return to the simplest
nomenclature and appear in the clouds of heaven endowed with
great power and majesty. 3 “And so it is said”: what was previously
“One” (see “Economy of the Old Testament”) has become
“ego” — the negative unity of realism and idealism, of the world of
things and the world of spirit. Schelling calls this unity of realism and
idealism “indifference” or, rendered in the Berlin dialect, “Jleich-
jiltigkeit ; in Hegel it becomes the negative unity in which the two
moments are transcended. Saint Max who, being a proper German
speculative philosopher, is still tormented by the “unity of oppo-
sites”, is not satisfied with this; he wants this unity to be visible to him
in the form of a “corporeal individual”, in a “whole fellow”, and he
is encouraged in this by Feuerbach’s views expressed in the Anekdota h
and in the Philosophie der Zukunft. This “ego” of Stirner’s which is the
final outcome of the hitherto existing world is, therefore, not a
“corporeal individual”, but a category constructed on the Hegelian
method and supported by appositions, the further “flea-jumps” of
which we shall trace in the New Testament. Here we shall merely add
that in the final analysis this ego comes into existence because it has
the same illusions about the world of the Christian as the Christian
has about the world of things. Just as the Christian takes possession
of the world of things by “getting into his head” fantastic nonsense
about them, so the “ego”takes possession of the Christian world, the
world of thoughts, by means of a series of fantastic ideas about it.
What the Christian imagines about his own relation to the world,

a Cf. Matthew 24:30.— Ed.

b Ludwig Feuerbach, “VorlaufigeThesen zur Reformation der Philosophie” . — Ed.

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“Stirner” accepts in good faith, finds excellent, and good-naturedly
repeats after him.

“Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds ” (Epistle to
the Romans 3 : 28).

Hegel, for whom the modern world was also resolved into the
world of abstract ideas, defines the task of the modern philosopher,
in contrast to that of the ancient, as consisting in the following:
instead of, like the ancients, freeing himself from “natural
consciousness” and “purging the individual of the immediate,
sensuous method and making him into conceived and thinking
substance” (into spirit), the modern philosopher should “abolish
firm, definite, fixed ideas”. This, he adds, is accomplished by
“dialectics” ( Phanomenologie , pp. 26, 27). The difference between
“Stirner” and Hegel is that the former achieves the same thing
without the help of dialectics.

6. The Free Ones

What role “the free ones” have to play here is stated in the
economy of the Old Testament. We cannot help it that the ego,
which we had approached so closely, now recedes from us again into
the nebulous distance. It is not at all our fault that we did not pass at
once to the ego from page 20 of “the book”.

A. Political Liberalism

The key to the criticism of liberalism advanced by Saint Max and
his predecessors is the history of the German bourgeoisie. We shall
call special attention to some aspects of this history since the French
Revolution.

The state of affairs in Germany at the end of the last century is
fully reflected in Kant’s Critik der practischen Vernunft. While the
French bourgeoisie, by means of the most colossal revolution that
history has ever known, was achieving domination and conquering
the Continent of Europe, while the already politically emancipated
English bourgeoisie was revolutionising industry and subjugating
India politically, and all the rest of the world commercially, the
impotent German burghers did not get any further than “good will”.
Kant was satisfied with “good will” alone, even if it remained entirely
without result, and he transferred the realisation of this good will, the
harmony between it and the needs and impulses of individuals, to the
world beyond. Kant’s good will fully corresponds to the impotence,
depression and wretchedness of the German burghers, whose petty

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

interests were never capable of developing into the common,
national interests of a class and who were, therefore, constantly
exploited by the bourgeois of all other nations. These petty, local
interests had as their counterpart, on the one hand, the truly local
and provincial narrow-mindedness of the German burghers and, on
the other hand, their cosmopolitan swollen-headedness. In general,
from the time of the Reformation German development has borne a
completely petty-bourgeois character. The old feudal aristocracy
was, for the most part, annihilated in the peasant wars; what remain-
ed of it were either imperial petty princes who gradually achieved a
certain independence and aped the absolute monarchy on a minute,
provincial scale, or lesser landowners who partly squandered their
little bit of property at the tiny courts, and then gained their
livelihood from petty positions in the small armies and government
offices — or, finally, Junkers from the backwoods, who lived a life of
which even the most modest English squire 3 or French gentilhomme de
province would have been ashamed. Agriculture was carried on by a
method which was neither parcellation nor large-scale production,
and which, despite the preservation of feudal dependence and
corvees, never drove the peasants to seek emancipation, both
because this method of farming did not allow the emergence of any
active revolutionary class and because of the absence of the
revolutionary bourgeoisie corresponding to such a peasant class.

As regards the middle class, we can only emphasise here a few
significant factors. It is significant that linen manufacture, i.e., an
industry based on the spinning wheel and the hand-loom, came to be
of some importance in Germany at the very time when in England
those cumbersome tools were already being ousted by machines.
Most characteristic of all is the position of the German middle class in
relation to Holland. Holland, the only part of the Hanseatic League 60
that became commercially important, tore itself free, cut Germany
off from world trade except for two ports (Hamburg and Bremen)
and since then dominated the whole of German trade. The German
middle class was too impotent to set limits to exploitation by the
Dutch. The bourgeoisie of little Holland, with its well-developed
class interests, was more powerful than the far more numerous
German middle class with its indifference and its divided petty
interests. The fragmentation of interests was matched by the
fragmentation of political organisation, the division into small
principalities and free imperial cities. How could political concentra-
tion arise in a country which lacked all the economic conditions for it?

a Marx and Engels use the English word.— Ed.

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The impotence of each separate sphere of life (one can speak here
neither of estates nor of classes, but at most of former estates and
classes not yet born) did not allow any one of them to gain exclusive
domination. The inevitable consequence was that during the epoch
of absolute monarchy, which assumed here its most stunted,
semi-patriarchal form, the special sphere which, owing to division of
labour, was responsible for the administration of public interests
acquired an abnormal independence, which became still greater in
the bureaucracy of modern times. Thus, the state built itself up into
an apparently independent force, and this position, which in other
countries was only transitory — a transition stage— it has maintained
in Germany until the present day. This position of the state explains
both the conscientiousness of the civil servant, which is found
nowhere else, and all the illusions about the state which are current
in Germany, as well as the apparent independence of German
theoreticians in relation to the middle class — the seeming contradic-
tion between the form in which these theoreticians express the
interests of the middle class and these interests themselves.

The characteristic form which French liberalism, based on real
class interests, assumed in Germany we find again in Kant. Neither
he, nor the German middle class, whose whitewashing spokesman he
was, noticed that these theoretical ideas of the bourgeoisie had as
their basis material interests and a will that was conditioned and
determined by the material relations of production. Kant, there-
fore, separated this theoretical expression from the interests which it
expressed; he made the materially motivated determinations of the
will of the French bourgeois into pure self-determinations of “ free
will ”, of the will in and for itself, of the human will, and so converted
it into purely ideological conceptual determinations and moral
postulates. Hence the German petty bourgeois recoiled in horror
from the practice of this energetic bourgeois liberalism as soon as this
practice showed itself, both in the Reign of Terror and in shameless
bourgeois profit-making.

Under the rule of Napoleon, the German middle class pushed its
petty trade and its great illusions still further. As regards the
petty-trading spirit which predominated in Germany at that time,
Saint Sancho can, inter alia, compare Jean Paul, to mention only
works of fiction, since they are the only source open to him. The
German citizens, who railed against Napoleon for compelling them
to drink chicory 61 and for disturbing their peace with military
billeting and recruiting of conscripts, reserved all their moral
indignation for Napoleon and all their admiration for England; yet
Napoleon rendered them the greatest services by cleaning out

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

Germany’s Augean stables and establishing civilised means of
communication, whereas the English only waited for the opportunity
to exploit them a tort et a traverse In the same petty-bourgeois spirit
the German princes imagined they were fighting for the principle of
legitimism and against revolution, whereas they were only the paid
mercenaries of the English bourgeoisie. In the atmosphere of these
universal illusions it was quite in the order of things that the estates
privileged to cherish illusions — ideologists, school-masters, students,
members of the Tugendbund ’ 2 — should talk big and give a suitable
highflown expression to the universal mood of fantasy and
indifference.

The political forms corresponding to a developed bourgeoisie
were passed on to the Germans from outside by the July
revolution 6 — as we mention only a few main points we omit the
intermediary period. Since German economic relations had by no
means reached the stage of development to which these political
forms corresponded, the middle class accepted them merely as
abstract ideas, principles valid in and for themselves, pious wishes
and phrases, Kantian self-determinations of the will and of human
beings as they ought to be. Consequently their attitude to these forms
was far more moral and disinterested than that of other nations, i.e.,
they exhibited a highly peculiar narrow-mindedness and remained
unsuccessful in all their endeavours.

Finally the ever more powerful foreign competition and world
intercourse — from which it became less and less possible for
Germany to stand aside — compelled the diverse local interests in
Germany to adopt some sort of common attitude. Particularly since
1840, the German middle class began to think about safeguarding
these common interests; its attitude became national and liberal and
it demanded protective tariffs and constitutions. Thus it has now got
almost as far as the French bourgeoisie in 1789.

If, like the Berlin ideologists, one judges liberalism and the state
within the framework of local German impressions, or limits oneself
merely to criticism of German-bourgeois illusions about liberalism,
instead of seeing the correlation of liberalism with the real interests
from which it originated and without which it cannot really
exist — then, of course, one arrives at the most banal conclusions.
This German liberalism, in the form in which it expressed itself up to
the most recent period, is, as we have seen, even in its popular form,
empty enthusiasm, ideological reflections about real liberalism. How
easy it is, therefore, to transform its content wholly into philosophy,

At random, recklessly. — Ed.
1830— Ed.

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into pure conceptual determinations, into “rational cognition”!
Hence if one is so unfortunate as to know even this bourgeoisified
liberalism only in the sublimated form given it by Hegel and the
school-masters who depend on him, then one will arrive at
conclusions belonging exclusively to the sphere of the holy. Sancho
will provide us with a pitiful example of this.

“Recently” in active circles “so much has been said” about the rule
of the bourgeois, “that it is not surprising that news of it”, if only
through the medium of L. Blanc (translated by the Berliner Buhl), a
etc., “has even penetrated to Berlin” and there attracted the
attention of easy-going school-masters ( Wigand , p. 190). It cannot,
however, be said that “Stirner” in his method of appropriating
current ideas has “adopted a particularly fruitful and profitable
style” ( Wigand , ibid.) — as was already evident from his exploitation
of Hegel and will now be further exemplified.

It has not escaped our school-master that in recent times the
liberals have been identified with the bourgeois. Since Saint Max
identifies the bourgeois with the good burghers, with the petty
German burghers, he does not grasp what has been transmitted to
him as it is in fact and as it is expressed by all competent
authors — viz., that the liberal phrases are the idealistic expression of
the real interests of the bourgeoisie — but, on the contrary, as
meaning that the final goal of the bourgeois is to become a perfect
liberal, a citizen of the state. For Saint Max the bourgeois is not the
truth of the ciioyen, but the citoyen the truth of the bourgeois. This
conception, which is as holy as it is German, goes to such lengths that,
on page 130, “the middle class” (it should read: the domination of
the bourgeoisie) is transformed into a “thought, nothing but a
thought” and “the state” comes forward as the “true man”, who in
the “Rights of Man” confers the rights of “Man”, the true
solemnisation on each individual bourgeois. And all this occurs after
the illusions about the state and the rights of man had already been
adequately exposed in the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbiicher* a fact

* In the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbiicher this was done, in view of the context, only
in relation to the rights of man proclaimed by the French Revolution. [Cf. Karl Marx,
“Zur Judenfrage” (see present edition, Vol. 3, pp. 161-65). — Ed.] Incidentally, this
whole conception of competition as “the rights of man” can already be found among
representatives of the bourgeoisie a century earlier (John Hampden, Petty,
Boisguillebert, Child, etc.). On the relation of the theoretical liberals to the bourgeois
compare what has been said [above] on the relation of the ideologists of a class to the
class itself. [See p. 176 of this volume. — Ed.]

a The reference is to Louis Blanc, Histoire de dix ans 1830-1840, which appeared in
Berlin in 1844-45 in Ludwig Buhl’s translation under the title Geschichte der zehn
Jahre. — Ed.

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which Saint Max notices at last in his “Apologetical Commentary”
anno 1845. Hence he can transform the bourgeois — having sepa-
rated the bourgeois as a liberal from the empirical bourgeois — into a
holy liberal, just as he transforms the state into the “holy”, and the
relation of the bourgeois to the modern state into a holy relation, into
a cult (p. 131) — and with this, in effect, he concludes his criticism of
political liberalism. He has transformed it into the “holy”.*

We wish to give here a few examples of how Saint Max embellishes
this property of his with historical arabesques. For this purpose he
uses the French Revolution, concerning which a small contract to
supply him with a few data has been negotiated by his historv-broker,
Saint Bruno.

On the basis of a few words from Bailly, obtained moreover
through the intermediary of Saint Bruno’s Denkwiirdigkeiten , a the
statement is made that through the convening of the States General
“those who hitherto were subjects arrive at the consciousness that
they are proprietors” (p. 132). On the contrary, mon bravel By the
convening of the States General, those who hitherto were propri-
etors show their consciousness of being no longer subjects — a con-
sciousness which was long ago arrived at, for example in the Physio-
crats, and — in polemical form against the bourgeoisie — in Linguet
(' Theorie des lots civiles, 1767), Mercier, Mably, and, in general, in the
writings against the Physiocrats. This meaning was also immediately
understood at the beginning of the revolution — for example by
Brissot, Fauchet, Marat, in the Cercle social 63 and by all the democrat-
ic opponents of Lafayette. If Saint Max had understood the matter
as it took place independently of his history-broker, he would not
have been surprised that “Bailly ’s words certainly sound [as if each
man were now a proprietor...” and that the bourgeois ... express...
the rule of the proprietors ... that now the proprietors have become
the bourgeoisie par excellence.] 64

[...] “As early as July 8 the statement of the Bishop of Autun b and Barere
[destroyed] the illusion that [each man], the individual, was of importance in the
legislature; it [showed] the utter impotence of the constituents. The majority of the
deputies has become master.” JStirner, op. cit., p. 132 f.j

* [The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:] For him thereby
criticism as a whole “achieves its final goal” and all cats turn grey, thereby he also
admits his ignorance of the real basis and the real content of the rule of the
bourgeoisie.

a A reference to Edgar Bauer’s essay “Bailly und die ersten Tage der
Franzbsischen Revolution” in Denkwiirdigkeiten zur Geschichte der neueren Zeit seit der
Revolution, by Bruno and Edgar Bauer. — Ed.

I.e., Talleyrand, who was Bishop of Autun from 1788 to 1791. — Ed.

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The “ statement of the Bishop of Autun and Barere” is a motion
tabled by the former on July 4 (not 8), with which Barere had
nothing to do except that together with many others he supported it
on July 8. It was carried on July 9, hence it is not at all clear why Saint
Max speaks of “July 8”. This motion by no means “destroyed” “the
illusion that each man, the individual, was of importance”, etc.; but it
destroyed the binding force of the Cahiers given to the deputies, that
is, the influence and the “importance”, not of “each man, the
individual”, but of the feudal 177 bailliages and 431 divisions des
ordres. By carrying the motion, the Assembly discarded the
characteristic features of the old, feudal Etats generaux. 65 Moreover, it
was at that time by no means a question of the correct theory of
popular representation, but of highly practical, essential problems.
Broglie’s army held Paris at bay and drew nearer every day; the
capital was in a state of utmost agitation; hardly a fortnight had
passed since the jeu de paume and the lit de justice, 66 the court was
plotting with the bulk of the aristocracy and the clergy against the
National Assembly; lastly, owing to the still existing feudal provincial
tariff barriers, and as a result of the feudal agrarian system as a
whole, most of the provinces were in the grip of famine and there
was a great scarcity of money. At that moment it was a question of an
assemblee essentiellement active, as Talleyrand himself put it, while the
Cahiers of [the] aristocratic and other reactionary groups provided
the court with an opportunity to declare [the] decision of the Assem-
bly [void by referring] to the wishes of the constituents. The Assem-
bly proclaimed its independence by carrying Talleyrand’s motion
and seized the power it required, which in the political sphere could,
of course, only be done within the framework of political form and
by making use of the existing theories of Rousseau, etc. (Cf. Le point
du jour, par Barere de Vieuzac, 1789, Nos. 15 and 17.) The National
Assembly had to take this step because it was being urged forward by
the immense mass of the people that stood behind it. By so doing,
therefore, it did not at all transform itself into an “utterly egoistical
chamber, completely cut off from the umbilical cord and ruthless”
[p. 147]; on the contrary it actually transformed itself thereby into
the true organ of the vast majority of Frenchmen, who would
otherwise have crushed it, as they later crushed “utterly egoistical”
deputies who “completely cut themselves off from the umbilical
cord”. But Saint Max, with the help of his history -broker, sees here
merely the solution of a theoretical question; he takes the
Constituent Assembly, six days before the storming of the Bastille,
for a council of church fathers debating a point of dogma! The
question regarding the “importance of each man, the individual”.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

can, moreover, only arise in a democratically elected representative
body, and during the revolution it only came up for discussion in the
Convention, and for as empirical reasons as earlier the question of
the Cahiers. A problem which the Constituent Assembly decided also
theoretically was the distinction between the representative body of a
ruling class and that of the ruling estates; and this political rule of the
bourgeois class was determined by each individual’s position, since it
was determined by the relations of production prevailing at the time.
The representative system is a very specific product of modern
bourgeois society which is as inseparable from the latter as is the
isolated individual of modern times.

Just as here Saint Max takes the 177 bailliages and 431 divisions des
ordres for “individuals”, so he later sees in the absolute monarch and
his car tel est notre plaisir a the rule of the “individual” as against the
constitutional monarch, the “rule of the apparition [”] (p. 141), and
in the aristocrat and the guild-member he again sees the “individu-
al” in contrast to the citizen (p. 137).

“The Revolution was not directed against reality, but against this reality, against
this definite existence ” (p. 145).

Hence, not against the really existing system of landownership, of
taxes, of customs duties which hampered commerce at every turn,
and the [...]

[... b “Stirner” thinks] it makes no difference [“to ‘the good
burghers’ who defends them] and their principles, whether an
absolute or a constitutional king, a republic, etc. — For the “good
burghers” who quietly drink their beer in a Berlin beer-cellar this
undoubtedly “makes no difference”; but for the historical bourgeois
it is by no means a matter of indifference. The “good burgher”
“Stirner” here again imagines — as he does throughout this sec-
tion — that the French, American and English bourgeois are good
Berlin beer-drinking philistines. If one translates the sentence above
from the language of political illusion into plain language, it means:
“it makes no difference” to the bourgeoisie whether it rules
unrestrictedly or whether its political and economic power is
counterbalanced by other classes. Saint Max believes that an absolute
king, or someone else, could defend the bourgeoisie just as
successfully as it defends itself. And even “its principles”, which
consist in subordinating state power to “ chacun pour soi, chacun chez

For this is our will — the concluding words of royal edicts. — Ed.
b A gap in the manuscript. — Ed.

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201

soi” a and exploiting it for that purpose — an “absolute monarch” is
supposed to be able to do that! Let Saint Max name any country with
developed trade and industry and strong competition where the
bourgeoisie entrusts its defence to an “absolute monarch”.

After this transformation of the historical bourgeois into German
philistines devoid of history, “Stirner”, of course, does not need to
know any other bourgeois than “comfortable burghers and loyal
officials’^!!) — two spectres who only dare to show themselves on
“holy” German soil — and can lump together the whole class as
“obedient servants” (p. 138). Let him just take a look at these
obedient servants on the stock exchanges of London, Manchester,
New York and Paris. Since Saint Max is well under way, he can now
go the whole hog b and, believing one of the narrow-minded
theoreticians of the Einundzwanzig Bogen who says that “liberalism is
rational cognition applied to our existing conditions” 0 , can declare
that the “liberals are fighters for reason”. It is evident from these [...]
phrases how little the Germans have recovered [from] their original
illusions about liberalism. Abraham “against hope believed in hope”
... and his faith “was imputed to him for righteousness” (Romans
4: 18 and 22).

“The state pays well, so that its good citizens can without danger pay poorly; it
provides itself by means of good payment with servants from whom it forms a
force — the police — for the protection of good citizens and the good citizens willingly
pay high taxes to the state in order to pay so much lower amounts to their workers”
(p. 152).

This should read: the bourgeois pay their state well and make the
nation pay for it so that without risk thev should be able to pay
poorly; by good payment they ensure that the state servants are a
force available for their protection — the police; they willingly pay,
and force the nation to pay high taxes so as to be able without dan-
ger to shift the sums they pay on to the workers as a levy (as a
deduction from wages). “Stirner” here makes the new economic
discovery that wages are a levy, a tax, paid by the bourgeois to the
proletarian; whereas the other, mundane economists regard taxes as
a tribute which the proletarian pays to the bourgeois.

Our holy church father now passes from the holy middle class to
the Stirnerian “unique” proletariat (p. 148). The latter consists of

a Each for himself and the devil take the hindmost. — Ed.
h The words “the whole hog” are in English in the manuscript. — Ed.
c From the article “Preussen seit der Einsetzung Arndt’s bis zur Absetzung
Bauer's” published anonymously in the Einundzwanzig Bogen aus der Schweiz. — Ed.

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“rogues, prostitutes, thieves, robbers and murderers, gamblers,
propertyless people with no occupation and frivolous individuals”
(ibid.)- They form the “dangerous proletariat” and for a moment are
reduced by “Stirner” to “individual shouters”, and then, finally, to
“vagabonds”, who find their perfect expression in the “spiritual
vagabonds” who do not “keep within the bounds of a moderate way
of thinking.”...

“So wide a meaning has the so-called proletariat or” ( per appos.) “pauperism”!
(p. 149).

On page 151 [“on the other hand,] the state sucks the life-blood”
of the proletariat. Hence the entire proletariat consists of ruined
bourgeois and ruined proletarians, of a collection of ragamuffins,
who have existed in every epoch and whose existence on a mass scale
after the decline of the Middle Ages preceded the mass formation of
the ordinary proletariat, as Saint Max can ascertain by a perusal of
English and French legislation and literature. Our saint has exactly
the same notion of the proletariat as the “good comfortable
burghers” and, particularly, the “loyal officials”. He is consistent also

in identifying the proletariat with pauperism, whereas pauperism is
the position only of the ruined proletariat, the lowest level to which
the proletarian sinks who has become incapable of resisting the
pressure of the bourgeoisie, and it is only the proletarian whose
whole energy has been sapped who becomes a pauper. Compare
Sismondi, 3 Wade, b etc. “Stirner” and his fraternity, for example, can
in the eyes of the proletarians, in certain circumstances count as
paupers but never as proletarians.

Such are Saint Max’s “own” ideas about the bourgeoisie and the
proletariat. But since with these imaginations about liberalism, good
burghers and vagabonds he, of course, gets nowhere, he finds
himself compelled in order to make the transition to communism to
bring in the actual, ordinary bourgeois and proletarians insofar as he
knows about them from hearsay. This occurs on pages 151 and 152,
where the lumpen-proletariat becomes transformed into “workers”,
into ordinary proletarians, while the bourgeois “in course
of time” undergoes “occasionally” a series of “various transfor-
mations” and “manifold refractions”. In one line we read: “ The
propertied rule ”, i.e., the profane bourgeois; six lines later we read:
“The citizen is what he is by the grace of the state”, i.e., the
holy bourgeois; yet another six lines later: “The state is the status
of the middle class”, i.e., the profane bourgeois; this is then ex-

3 Simonde de Sismondi, Nouveaux principes d’economie politique. — Ed.
John Wade, History of the Middle and Working Classes. — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max 203

plained by saying that “the state gives the propertied” “their prop-
erty in feudal possession” and that the “money and property” of
the “capitalists”, i.e., the holy bourgeois, is such “state property”
transferred by the state to “feudal possession”. Finally, this
omnipotent state is again transformed into the “state of the
propertied”, i.e., of the profane bourgeois, which is in accord
with a later passage: “Owing to the revolution the bourgeoisie
became omnipotent ” (p. 156). Even Saint Max would never have
been able to achieve these “heart-rending” and “horrible” con-
tradictions — at any rate, he would never have dared to promul-
gate them — had he not had the assistance of the German word
“Burger” [citizen], which he can interpret at will as “citoyen” or as
“ bourgeois ” or as the German “good burgher”.

Before going further, we must take note of two more great
politico-economic discoveries which our simpleton “brings into
being” “in the depths of his heart” and which have in common with
the “joy of youth” of page 17 the feature of being also “pure
thoughts”.

On page 1 50 all the evil of the existing social relations is reduced to
the fact that “burghers and workers believe in the ‘truth’ of money”.
Jacques le bonhomme imagines that it is in the power of the
“burghers” and “workers”, who are scattered among all civilised
states of the world, suddenly, one fine day, to put on record their
“disbelief” in the “truth of money”; he even believes that if this
nonsense were possible, something would be achieved by it. He
believes that any Berlin writer could abolish the “truth of money”
with the same ease as he abolishes in his mind the “truth” of God or
of Hegelian philosophy. That money is a necessary product of
definite relations of production and intercourse and remains a
“truth” so long as these relations exist — this, of course, is of no
concern to a holy man like Saint Max, who raises his eyes towards
heaven and turns his profane backside to the profane world.

The second discovery is made on page 152 and amounts to this,
that “the worker cannot turn his labour to account” because he “falls
into the hands” of “those who” have received “some kind of state
property” “in feudal possession”. This is merely a further explana-
tion of the sentence on page 151 already quoted above where the
state sucks the life-blood of the worker. And here everyone will
immediately “put forward” “the simple reflection” — that “Stirner”
does not do so is not “surprising”— how does it come about
that the state has not given the “workers” also some sort of “state
property” in “feudal possession”. If Saint Max had asked himself
this question he would probably have managed to do without his

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

construction of the “holy” burghers, because he would have been
bound to see the relation in which the propertied stand to the
modern state.

By means of the opposition of the bourgeoisie and proletariat — as
even “Stirner” knows — one arrives at communism. But how one
arrives at it, only “Stirner” knows.

“The workers have the most tremendous power in their hands ... they have only to
cease work and to regard what they have produced by their labour as their property
and to enjoy it. This is the meaning of the workers’ disturbances which flare up here
and there” (p. 153).

Workers’ disturbances, which even under the Byzantine Emperor
Zeno led to the promulgation of a law (Zeno, de novis operibus
constitution , which “flared up” in the fourteenth century in the form
of the Jacquerie and Wat Tyler’s rebellion, in 1518 on the Evil May
Day b in London, and in 1549 in the great uprising of the tanner
Kett, 67 and later gave rise to Act 15 of the second and third year of
the reign of Edward VI, and a series of similar Acts of Parliament;
the disturbances which soon afterwards, in 1640 and 1659 (eight
uprisings in one year), took place in Paris and which already since the
fourteenth century must have been frequent in France and England,
judging by the legislation of the time; the constant war which since
1770 in England and since the revolution in France has been waged
with might and cunning by the workers against the bourgeoisie — all
this exists for Saint Max only “here and there”, in Silesia, Poznan,
Magdeburg and Berlin, “according to German newspaper reports”.

What is produced by labour, according to Jacques le bonhomme’s
imagination, would continue to exist and be reproduced, as an object
to be “regarded” and “enjoyed”, even if the producers “ceased
work”.

As he did earlier in the case of money, now again our good
burgher transforms “the workers”, who are scattered throughout
the civilised world, into a private club which has only to adopt a
decision in order to get rid of all difficulties. Saint Max does not
know, of course, that at least fifty attempts have been made in
England since 1830, and at the present moment yet another is being
made, to gather all the English workers into a single association and
that highly empirical causes have frustrated the success of all these
projects. He does not know that even a minority of workers who
combine and go on strike very soon find themselves compelled to act
in a revolutionary way — a fact he could have learned from the 1842

a Zeno, Decree on New Works. — Ed.

The words “Evil May Day” are in English in the manuscript. — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

205

uprising in England and from the earlier Welsh uprising of 1839, in
which year the revolutionary excitement among the workers first
found comprehensive expression in the “sacred month”, which was
proclaimed simultaneously with a general arming of the people. 68
Here again we see how Saint Max constantly tries to pass off his
nonsense as “ the meaning” of historical facts (in which he is
successful at best in relation to his “one”) — historical facts “on which
he foists his own meaning, which are thus bound to lead to
nonsense” ( Wigand , p. 194). Incidentally, it would never enter the
head of any proletarian to turn to Saint Max for advice about the
“meaning” of the proletarian movements or what should be
undertaken at the present time against the bourgeoisie.

After this great campaign, our Saint Sancho returns to his
Maritornes with the following fanfare:

“The state rests on the slavery of labour. If labour were to become free, the state
would be lost” (p. 153).

The modern state, the rule of the bourgeoisie, is based on freedom of
labour. The idea that along with freedom of religion, state, thought,
etc., and hence “occasionally” “also” “perhaps” with freedom of
labour, not I become free, but only one of my enslavers — this idea was
borrowed by Saint Max himself, many times, though in a very
distorted form, from the Deutsch-Franzosische Jahrbucher . a Freedom of
labour is free competition of the workers among themselves. Saint
Max is very unfortunate in political economy as in all other spheres.
Labour is free in all civilised countries; it is not a matter of freeing
labour but of abolishing it.

B. Communism

Saint Max calls communism “social liberalism”, because he is well
aware how great is the disrepute of the word liberalism among the
radicals of 1842 and the most advanced Berlin “free-thinkers”. 9
This transformation gives him at the same time the opportunity and
courage to put into the mouths of the “social liberals” all sorts of
things which had never been uttered before “Stirner” and the
refutation of which is intended to serve also as a refutation of
communism.

Communism is overcome by means of a series of partly logical and
partly historical constructions.

Cf. present edition, Vol. 3, p. 152. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

First logical construction.

Because “we have seen ourselves made into servants of egoists”, “we should” not
ourselves “become egoists ... but should rather see to it that egoists become impossible.
We want to turn them all into ragamuffins, we want no one to possess anything, in
order that ‘all’ should be possessors. — So say the social [liberals]. — Who is this person
whom you call ‘all’? It is ‘society’” (p. 153).

With the aid of a few quotation marks Sancho here transforms
“all” into a person, society as a person, as a subject =holy society, the
holy. Now our saint knows what he is about and can let loose the
whole torrent of his flaming anger against “the holy”, as the result of
which, of course, communism is annihilated.

That Saint Max here again puts his nonsense into the mouth of the
“social [liberals]”, as being the meaning of their words, is not
“surprising”. He identifies first of all “owning” as a private
property-owner with “owning” in general. Instead of examining the
definite relations between private property and production, instead
of examining “owning” as a landed proprietor, as a rentier, as
a merchant, as a factory-owner, as a worker — where “owning” would
be found to be a quite distinct kind of owning, control over other
people’s labour — he transforms all these relations into “owning as
such”. a

[...] political liberalism, which made the “nation” the supreme
owner. Hence communism has no longer to “abolish” any “personal
property” but, at most, has to equalise the distribution of “feudal
possessions”, to introduce egalite there.

On society as “supreme owner” and on the “ragamuffin”. Saint
Max should compare, inter alia, L’Egalitaire for 1840:

“Social property is a contradiction, but social wealth is a consequence of
communism. Fourier, in contradistinction to the modest bourgeois moralists, repeats a
hundred times that it is not a social evil that some have too much but that all have too
little”, and therefore draws attention also to the “poverty of the rich”, in La fausse
Industrie , Paris, 1835, p. 410.

Similarly as far back as 1839 — hence before Weitling’s Garan-
tien h - — it is stated in the German communist magazine Die Stimme des
Volks (second issue, p. 14) published in Paris:

“Private property, the much praised, industrious, comfortable, innocent ‘private
gain', does obvious harm to the wealth of life .” c

a Four pages of the manuscript are missing here which contained the end of the
“first logical construction ” and the beginning of the “ second logical construction ” . — Ed.

Wilhelm Weitling, Garantien der Harmonie und Freiheit. — Ed.

c This seems to be a quotation from the article “Politischer und Socialer
Umschwung” published in Blatter der Zukunft, 1846, No. 5. Die Stimme des Volks was
probably mentioned by mistake. — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

207

Saint Sancho here takes as communism the ideas of a few liberals
tending towards communism, and the mode of expression of some
communists who, for very practical reasons, express themselves in a
political form.

After “Stirner” has transferred property to “society”, all the
members of this society in his eyes at once become paupers and
ragamuffins, although — even according to his idea of the communist
order of things — they “own” the “supreme owner”. — His benevo-
lent proposal to the communists — “to transform the word ‘Lump’ 2
into an honourable form of address, just as the revolution did with
the word ‘citizen’ is a striking example of how he confuses
communism with something which long ago passed away. The
revolution even “transformed” the word sansculotte “into an
honourable form of address”, as against “ honnetes gens ”, which he
translates very inadequately as good citizens. Saint Sancho does this
in order that there may be fulfilled the words in the book of the
prophet Merlin about the three thousand and three hundred slaps
which the man who is to come will have to give himself:

Es menester que Sancho tu escudero

Se de tres mil azotes, y trecientos

En ambas sus valientes posaderas

A1 aire descubiertas, y de modo

Que le escuezan, le amarguen y le enfaden.

( Don Quijote, tomo II, cap. 35. ) b

Saint Sancho notes that the “elevation of society to supreme
owner” is a “second robbery of the personal element in the interests of
humanity”, while communism is only the completed robbery of the
“robbery of the personal element”. “Since he unquestionably
regards robbery as detestable”, Saint Sancho “therefore believes for
example” that he “has branded” communism “already by the”
above “proposition” (“the book”, p. 102). “Once” “Stirner” has
“detected” “even robbery” in communism, “how could he fail to feel
‘profound disgust’ at it and ‘just indignation’”! ( Wigand , p. 156.) We
now challenge “Stirner” to name a bourgeois who has written about
communism (or Chartism) and has not put forward the same

a Ragamuffin. — Ed.

Needful it is that your squire, Sancho Panza,

Shall deal himself three thousand and three hundred
Lashes upon his two most ample buttocks.

Both to the air exposed, and in such sort

That they shall smart, and sting and vex him sorely.

( Don Quixote, Vol. II, Ch. 35.) — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

absurdity with great emphasis. Communism will certainly carry out
“robbery” of what the bourgeois regards as “personal”.

First corollary.

Page 349: “Liberalism at once came forward with the statement that it is an
essential feature of man to be not property, but property-owner. Since it was a question
here of man, and not of an individual, the question of how much, which was precisely
what constituted the particular interest of individuals, was left to their discretion.
Therefore, the egoism of individuals had the widest scope as regards this how much and
carried on tireless competition.”

That is to say: liberalism, i.e., liberal private property-owners, at
the beginning of the French Revolution gave private property a
liberal appearance by declaring it one of the rights of man. They
were forced to do so if only because of their position as a revolu-
tionising party; they were even compelled not only to give the mass
of the French [rural] population the right to property, [but also] to
let them seize actual property, and they could do all this because
thereby their own “how much”, which was what chiefly interested
them, remained intact and was even made safe.

We find here further that Saint Max makes competition arise from
liberalism, a slap that he gives history in revenge for the slaps which
he had to give himself above. A “more exact explanation” of the
manifesto with which he makes liberalism “ at once come forward”
can be found in Hegel, who in 1820 expressed himself as follows:

“In respect of external things it is rational” (i. e., it becomes me as reason, as a man)
“that I should possess property ... what and how much I possess is, therefore, legally a
matter of chance” ( Rechtsphilosophie , a § 49).

It is characteristic of Hegel that he turns the phrase of the
bourgeois into the true concept, into the essence of property, and
“Stirner” faithfully imitates him. On the basis of the above analysis,
Saint Max now makes the further statement, that communism

“raised the question as to how much property, and answered it in the sense that man
should have as much as he needs. Can my egoism be satisfied with that?... No. I must
rather have as much as I am capable of appropriating” (p. 349).

First of all it should be remarked here that communism has by no
means originated from § 49 of Hegel’s Rechtsphilosophie and its “what
and how much”. Secondly, “communism” does not dream of
wanting to give anything to “man”, for “communism” is not at all of
the opinion that “man” “needs” anything apart from a brief critical
elucidation. Thirdly, Stirner foists on to communism the conception

a G.W.F. Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophic des Rechts. The preface to this work is
dated June 25, 1820. — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

209

of “need” held by the present-day bourgeois; hence he introduces a
distinction which, on account of its paltriness, can be of importance
only in present-day society and its ideal copy — Stirner’s union of
“individual shouters” and free seamstresses. “Sdrner” has again
achieved great “penetration” into the essence of communism.
Finally, in his demand to have as much as he is capable of
appropriating (if this is not the usual bourgeois phrase that everyone
should have as much as his ability 3 permits him, that everyone
should have the right of free gain). Saint Sancho assumes
communism as having already been achieved in order to be able
freely to develop his “ability” and put it into operation, which by no
means depends solely on him, any more than his fortune itself, but
depends also on the relations of production and intercourse in which
he lives. (Cf. the chapter on the “Union”. b ) Incidentally, even Saint
Max himself does not behave according to his doctrine, for
throughout his “book” he “needs” things and uses things which he
was not “capable of appropriating”.

Second corollary.'

“But the social reformers preach a social law to us. The individual thus becomes
the slave of society” (p. 246). “In the opinion of the communists, everyone should
enjoy the eternal rights of man” (p. 238).

Concerning the expressions “law”, “labour”, etc., how they are
used by proletarian writers and what should be the attitude of
criticism towards them, we shall speak in connection with “True
Socialism” (see Volume II). As far as law is concerned, we with many
others have stressed the opposition of communism to law, both
political and private, as also in its most general form as the rights of
man. See the Deutsch-Franzdsische Jahrbiicher, where privilege, the
special right, is considered as something corresponding to private
property inseparable from social classes, and law as something
corresponding to the state of competition, of free private property
(p. 206 and elsewhere); equally, the rights of man themselves are
considered as privilege, and private property as monopoly. Further,
criticism of law is brought into connection with German philosophy
and presented as the consequence of criticism of religion (p. 72);
further, it is expressly stated that the legal axioms that are supposed
to lead to communism are axioms of private property, and the right
of common ownership is an imaginary premise of the right of private

3 The German word Vermogen used several times in this passage means not only
ability, capability but also wealth, fortune, means, property; the authors here play on
the various meanings of the word. — Ed.
b See this volume, pp. 393-94. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

property (pp. 98, 99). a Incidentally, even in the works of German
communists passages appeared very early — e.g., in the writings of
Hess, Einundzwanzig Bogen aus der Schweiz, 1843, p. 326 b and
elsewhere — which could be appropriated and distorted “by Stirner”
in his criticism of law.

Incidentally, the idea of using the phrase quoted above against
Babeuf, of regarding him as the theoretical representative of
communism could only occur to a Berlin school-master. “Stirner”,
however, has the effrontery to assert on page 247 that

communism, which assumes “that all people by nature have equal rights, refutes its
own thesis and asserts that people by nature have no rights at all. For it does not want,
for example, to admit that parents have rights in relation to their children; it abolishes
the family. In general, this whole revolutionary or Babouvist principle (compare Die
Kommunisten in der Schweiz, Kommissionalberichtf p. 3) is based on a religious, i.e., false,
outlook”.

A Yankee comes to England, where he is prevented by a Justice of
the Peace from flogging his slave, and he exclaims indignantly: “Do
you call this a land of liberty, where a man can’t larrup his nigger?” d

Saint Sancho here makes himself doubly ridiculous. Firstly, he sees
an abolition of the “equal rights of man” in the recognition of the
“equal rights by nature” of children in relation to parents, in the
granting of the same rights of man to children as well as to parents.
Secondly, two pages previously Jacques le bonhomme tells us that the
state does not interfere when a father beats his son, because it
recognises family rights. Thus, what he presents, on the one hand, as
a particular right (family right), he includes, on the other hand,
among the “equal rights of man by nature”. Finally, he admits that
he knows Babeuf only from the Bluntschli report, while this report
(p. 3), in turn, admits that its wisdom is derived from the worthy
L. Stein, e Doctor of Law. Saint Sancho’s thorough knowledge of
communism is evident from this quotation. Just as Saint Bruno is his
broker as regards revolution, so Saint Bluntschli is his broker as

a Cf. “Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy” by Engels and Contribution to
the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Law. Introduction and “On the Jewish Question”
by Marx (see present edition, Vol. 3, pp. 418, 175, 146. — Ed.

b This refers to Moses Hess’ article “Philosophic der That”, which was published
in Einundzwanzig Bogen aus der Schweiz. — Ed.

c Johann Caspar Bluntschli, Die Kommunisten in der Schweiz nach den bei Weitling
vorgefundenen Papieren. — Ed.

d This sentence is in English in the manuscript. — Ed.

e Lorenz von Stein, Der Socialismus und Communismus des heutigen Frankreichs. — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

211

regards communists. With such a state of affairs we ought not to be
surprised that a few lines lower down our rustic word of God a
reduces the fraternite of the revolution to “equality of the children of
God” (in what Christian dogma is there any talk of egalite?).

Third corollary.

Page 414: Because the principle of community culminates in communism,
therefore, communism = “apotheosis of the state founded on love”.

From the state founded on love, which is Saint Max’s own
fabrication, he here derives communism which then, of course,
remains an exclusively Stirnerian communism. Saint Sancho knows
only egoism on the one hand or the claim to the loving services, pity
and alms of people on the other hand. Outside and above this
dilemma nothing exists for him at all.

Third logical construction.

“Since the most oppressive evils are to be observed in society, it is especially” (!)
“the oppressed” (!) who “think that the blame is to be found in society and set
themselves the task of discovering the right society” (p. 155).

On the contrary, it is “Stirner” who “sets himself the task” of
discovering the “society” which is “right” for him, the holy society,
the society as the incarnation of the holy. Those who are
“oppressed” nowadays “in society”, “think” only about how to
achieve the society which is right for them, and this consists primarily
in abolishing the present society on the basis of the existing
productive forces. If, e.g., “oppressive evils are to be observed” in a
machine, if, for example, it refuses to work, and those who need the
machine (for example, in order to make money) find the fault in the
machine and try to alter it, etc. — then, in Saint Sancho’s opinion, they
are setting themselves the task not of putting the machine right, but
of discovering the right machine, the holy machine, the machine as
the incarnation of the holy, the holy as a machine, the machine in the
heavens. “Stirner” advises them to seek the blame “in themselves ”. Is
it not their fault that, for example, they need a hoe and a plough?
Could they not use their bare hands to plant potatoes and to extract
them from the soil afterwards? The saint, on page 156, preaches to
them as follows:

“It is merely an ancient phenomenon that one seeks first of all to lay the blame
anywhere but on oneself — and therefore on the state, on the selfishness of the rich, for
which, however, we ourselves are to blame.”

The “oppressed” who seeks to lay the “blame” for pauperism on
the “state” is, as we have noted above, no other than Jacques le

a Cf. August Friedrich Ernst Langbein’s poem, Der Landprediger. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

bonhomme himself. Secondly, the “oppressed” who comforts
himself by causing the “blame” to be laid on the “selfishness of the
rich” is again no other than Jacques le bonhomme. He could have
learned something better about the other oppressed from the Facts
and Fictions of John Watts, 3 tailor and doctor of philosophy, from
Hobson’s Poor Man's Companion, etc. And, thirdly, who is the person
that should bear the “blame”? Is it, perhaps, the proletarian child
who comes into the world tainted with scrofula, who is reared with
the help of opium and is sent into the factory when seven years
old — or is it, perhaps, the individual worker who is here expected to
“revolt” by himself against the world market — or is it, perhaps, the
girl who must either starve or become a prostitute? No, not these but
only he who seeks “all the blame”, i.e., the “blame” for everything
in the present state of the world, “in himself”, viz., once again no
other than Jacques le bonhomme himself. “This is merely the
ancient phenomenon” of Christian heart -searching and doing peni-
tence in a German-speculative form, with its idealist phraseology,
according to which I, the actual man, do not have to change
actuality, which I can only change together with others, but have
to change myself in myself. “It is the internal struggle of the writer
with himself” ( Die heilige Familie, p. 122, cf. pp. 73, 121 and 306). b

According to Saint Sancho, therefore, those oppressed by society
seek the right society. If he were consistent, he should make those
who “seek to lay the blame on the state” — and according to him
they are the very same people — also seek the right state. But he cannot
do this, because he has heard that the communists want to abolish
the state. He has now to construct this abolition of the state, and our
Saint Sancho once more achieves this with the aid of his “ass”, the
apposition, in a way that “looks very simple”:

“Since the workers are in a state of distress” [ Notstand ], “the existing state of affairs”

[ Stand der Dinge ], “i.e., the state” [ Staat ] ( status = state or estate) “must be abolished”
(ibid.).

Thus:

the state of distress
the existing state of affairs
state, estate
status

the existing state of affairs
state or estate
status
the State

Conclusion: the state of distress = the State.

3 John Watts, The Facts and Fictions of Political Economists. — Ed.
b See present edition, Vol. 4, pp. 83, 53, 82, 192. — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

213

What could “look simpler”? “It is only surprising” that the English
bourgeois in 1688 and the French in 1789 did not “put forward” the
same “simple reflections” and equations, since in those times it was
much more the case that estate = status = the State. It follows from this
that wherever a “state of distress” exists, “the State”, which is, of
course, the same in Prussia and North America, must be abolished.

As is his custom, Saint Sancho now presents us with a few proverbs
of Solomon.

Proverb of Solomon No. 1.

Page 163: “That society is no ego, which could give, etc., but an instrument from
which we can derive benefit; that we have no social duties, but only interests; that we
do not owe any sacrifices to society, but if we do sacrifice something we sacrifice it for
ourselves — all this is disregarded by the social [liberals], because they are in thrall to
the religious principle and are zealously striving for a — holy society.”

The following “penetrations” into the essence of communism
result from this;

1. Saint Sancho has quite forgotten that it was he himself who
transformed “society” into an “ego” and that consequently he finds
himself only in his own “society”.

2. He believes that the communists are only waiting for “society”
to “give” them something, whereas at most they want to give
themselves a society.

3. He transforms society, even before it exists, into an instrument
from which he wants to derive benefit, without him and other people
by their mutual social relations creating a society, and hence this
“instrument”.

4. He believes that in communist society there can be a question of
“duties” and “interests”, of two complementary aspects of an
antithesis which exists only in bourgeois society (under the guise of
interest the reflecting bourgeois always inserts a third thing between
himself and his mode of action — a habit seen in truly classic form in
Bentham, whose nose had to have some interest before it would
decide to smell anything. Compare “the book” on the right to one’s
nose, page 247).

5. Saint Max believes that the communists want to “make
sacrifices” for “society”, when they want at most to sacrifice existing
society; in this case he should describe their consciousness that their
struggle is the common cause of all people who have outgrown the
bourgeois system as a sacrifice that they make to themselves.

6. That the social [liberals] are in thrall to the religious principle
and

7. that they are striving for a holy society — these points have
already been dealt with above. How “zealously” Saint Sancho

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

“strives” for a “holy society”, so as to be able to refute communism
by means of it, we have already seen.

Proverb of Solomon No. 2.

Page 277: “If interest in the social problem were less passionate and blind, then one
... w ould understand that a society cannot be turned into a new one so long as those of
whom it consists and who constitute it remain as of old.”

“Stirner” believes that the communist proletarians who revolu-
tionise society and put the relations of production and the form of
intercourse on a new basis — i.e., on themselves as new people, on
their new mode of life — that these proletarians remain “as of old”.
The tireless propaganda carried on by these proletarians, their daily
discussions among themselves, sufficiently prove how little they
themselves want to remain “as of old”, and how little they want
people to remain “as of old”. They would only remain “as of old” if,
with Saint Sancho, they “sought the blame in themselves”; but they
know too well that only under changed circumstances will they cease
to be “as of old”, and therefore they are determined to change these
circumstances at the first opportunity. In revolutionary activity the
changing of oneself coincides with the changing of circumstances. —
This great saying is explained by means of an equally great example
which, of course, is again taken from the world of “the holy”.

“If, for example, the Jewish people was to give rise to a society which spread a new
faith throughout the world, then these apostles could not remain Pharisees.”

The first Christians = a society for spreading faith (founded

anno 1).

_ Congregatio de propaganda fide 70
(founded anno 1640).

Anno 1 =Anno 1640.

This society which should arise = These apostles.

These apostles = Non-Jews.

The Jewish people = Pharisees.

Christians = Non-Pharisees.

= Not the Jewish people.

What can look simpler?

Reinforced by these equations. Saint Max calmly utters the great
historic words a :

“Human beings, by no means intending to achieve their own development, have
always wanted to form a society.” .

Human beings, by no means wanting to form a society, have,
nevertheless, only achieved the development of society, because they

a Paraphrase of a line from Goethe’s Iphigenie auf Tauris, Act 1, Scene 3. — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

215

have always wanted to develop only as isolated individuals and
therefore achieved their own development only in and through
society. Incidentally it would only occur to a saint of the type of our
Sancho to separate the development of “human beings” from the
development of the “society” in which they live, and then let his
fantasy roam on this fantastic basis. Incidentally, he has forgotten his
own proposition, inspired by Saint Bruno, in which just previously
he set people the moral demand of changing themselves and thereby
changing their society — a proposition, therefore, in which he
identifies the development of people with the development of their
society.

Fourth logical construction.

On page 156 he makes the communists say, in opposition to the
citizens:

“Our essence” (!) ‘‘does not consist in all of us being equal children of the state” (!),
“but in that we all exist for one another. We are all equal in that we all exist for one
another, that each works for the other, that each of us is a worker.” He then regards
“to exist as a worker” as equivalent to “each of us exists only through the other”, so
that the other, “for example, works to clothe me, and I to satisfy his need of
entertainment, he for my food and I for his instruction. Hence participation in
labour is our dignity and our equality.

“What advantage do we derive from citizenship? Burdens. And what value is put
on our labour? The lowest possible.... What can you put against us? Again, only
labour!” “Only for labour do we owe you a recompense”; “only for what you do that is
useful to us” “have you any claim on us”. “We want to be only worth so much to you as
we perform for you; but you should be valued by us in just the same way.” “Deeds
which are of some value to us, i.e., work beneficial to the community, determine
value.... He who does something useful takes second place to no one, or — all workers
(beneficial to the community) are equal. Since however the worker is worthy of his
wage a , then let the wage also be equal” (pp. 157,158).

With “Stirner”, “communism” begins with searchings for “ es-
sence ”; being a good “youth” he wants again only to “penetrate
behind things”. That communism is a highly practical movement,
pursuing practical aims by practical means, and that only perhaps in
Germany, in opposing the German philosophers, can it spare a
moment for the problem of “essence” — this, of course, is of no
concern to our saint. This Stirnerian “communism”, which yearns so
much for “essence”, arrives, therefore, only at a philosophical
category, i.e., “being-for-one-another”, which then by means of a
few arbitrary equations:

Being-for-one-another = to exist only through another

= to exist as a worker

= universal community of workers

a Cf. Luke 10:7 .— Ed.

0—2086

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

is brought somewhat closer to the empirical world. We would,
moreover, challenge Saint Sancho to indicate, for example, in Owen
(who, after all, as a representative of English communism can serve
as an example of “communism” just as well as, for example, the
non-communist Proudhon,* from whom the greater part of the
above propositions were abstracted and then rearranged) a passage
containing anything of these propositions about “essence”, universal
community of workers, etc. Incidentally we do not even have to go so
far back. The third issue of Die Stimme des Volks, the German
communist magazine already quoted above, says:

“What is today called labour is only a miserably small part of the vast, mighty
process of production; for religion and morality honour with the name of labour only
the kind of production that is repulsive and dangerous, and in addition they venture
to embellish such labour with all kinds of maxims — as it were words of blessing (or
witchcraft) — ‘labour in the sweat of thy brow’ as a test imposed by God; ‘labour
sweetens life’ for encouragement, etc. The morality of the world in which we live takes
very good care not to apply the term work to the pleasing and free aspects of human
intercourse. These aspects are reviled by morality, although they too constitute
production. Morality eagerly reviles them as vanity, vain pleasure, sensuality.
Communism has exposed this hypocritical preaching, this miserable morality.” 3

As universal community of workers, Saint Max reduces the whole
of communism to equal wages — a discovery which is then repeated in
the following three “refractions”: on page 351, “Against competi-
tion there rises the principle of the society of ragamuffins — distribu-
tion. Is it possible then that I, who am very resourceful, b should have
no advantage over one who is resourceless?” Further, on page 363,
he speaks of a “universal tax on human activity in communist
society”. And, finally, on page 350, he ascribes to the communists the
view that “labour” is “the only resource” of man. Thus, Saint Max
re-introduces into communism private property in its dual form — as

* Proudhon, who was as early as 1841 strongly criticised by the communist
workers’ journal La Fraternite for advocating equal wages, community of workers in
general and also the other economic prejudices which can be found in the works of
this outstanding writer; Proudhon, from whom the communists have accepted
nothing but his criticism of property. [The note was left unfinished.]

a This seems to be a quotation from the article “Politischer und Socialer
Umschwung” published in Blatter der Zukunft, 1846, No. 5. Die Stimme des Volks was
probably mentioned by mistake. — Ed.

b In this section the authors play on the different meanings of the word
Vermogen and its derivatives vielvermogend, unvermogend, etc. Der Vielvermogende
can denote a person who is able, capable, wealthy, powerful, resourceful, a man of
property, etc.; der Unvermogende on the other hand, can mean unable, incapable,
inept, powerless, impecunious, resourceless, etc. — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

217

distribution and wage-labour. As before in connection with “rob-
bery”, Saint Max here again displays the most ordinary and
narrow-minded bourgeois views as “his own” “penetrations” into
the essence of communism. He shows himself fully worthy of the
honour of having been taught by Bluntschli. As a real
petty bourgeois, he is then afraid that he, “who is very resource-
ful”, “should have no advantage over one who is resourceless” —
although he should fear nothing so much as being left to his own
“resources”.

Incidentally, he “who is very resourceful” imagines that citizen-
ship is a matter of indifference to the proletarians, after he has first
assumed that they have it. This is just as he imagined above that for
the bourgeoisie the form of government is a matter of indifference.
The workers attach so much importance to citizenship, i.e., to active
citizenship, that where they have it, for instance in America, they
“make good use” of it, and where they do not have it, they strive to
obtain it. Compare the proceedings of the North American workers
at innumerable meetings, the whole history of English Chartism, and
of French communism and reformism . 71

First corollary.

“The worker, being conscious that the essential thing about him is that he is a
worker, keeps himself away from egoism and subordinates himself to the supremacy
of a society of workers, just as the bourgeois adhered with devotion” (!) “to the state
based on competition” (p. 162).

The worker is at most conscious that for the bourgeois the essential
thing about him is that he is a worker, who, therefore, can assert
himself against the bourgeois as such. Both these discoveries of Saint
Sancho, the “devotion of the bourgeois” and the “ state based on
competition”, can be recorded only as fresh proofs of the
“resourcefulness” of the “very resourceful” man.

Second corollary.

“The aim of communism is supposed to be the ‘well-being of all'. This indeed really
looks as though in this way no one need be in an inferior position. But what sort of
well-being will this be? Have all one and the same well-being? Do all people feel
equally well in one and the same circumstances?... If that is so, then it is a matter of
‘true well-being’. Do we not thereby arrive precisely at the point where the tyranny of
religion begins?... Society has decreed that a particular sort of well-being is ‘true
well-being’, and if this well-being were, for example, honestly earned enjoyment, but you
preferred enjoyable idleness, then society ... would prudently refrain from making
provision for what is for you well-being. By proclaiming the well-being of all,
communism destroys the well-being of those who up to now have lived as rentiers”,
etc. (pp. 411. 412).

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

“If that is so”, the following equations result from it:

The well-being of all = Communism
= If that is so

= One and the same well-being of all
= Equal well-being of all in one and
the same circumstances
= True well-being

= [Holy well-being, the holy, the rule of
the holy, hierarchy] 3
= Tyranny of religion.

Communism = Tyranny of religion.

“This indeed really looks as though” “Stirner” has said the same
thing about communism as he has said previously about everything
else.

How deeply our saint has “penetrated” into the essence of
communism is evident also from the fact that he ascribes to
communism the desire to bring about “true well-being” in the shape
of “honestlv earned enjoyment”. Who, except “Stirner” and a few
Berlin cobblers and tailors, thinks of “honestly earned enjoyment”!*
And, what is more, to put this into the mouth of communists, for
whom the basis of this whole opposition between work and
enjoyment disappears. Let our highly moral saint put his mind at
rest on this score. “Honest earning” will be left to him and those
whom, unknown to himself, he represents — his petty handicrafts-
men who have been ruined by industrial freedom and are morally
“indignant”. “Enjoyable idleness”, too, belongs wholly to the most
trivial bourgeois outlook. But the crowning point of the whole
statement is the artful bourgeois scruple that he raises against the
communists: that they want to abolish the “well-being” of the ren-
tier and yet talk about the “well-being of all”. Consequently, he
believes that in communist society there will still be rentiers, whose
“well-being” would have to be abolished. He asserts that “well-
being” as rentier is inherent in the individuals who are at present
rentiers, that it is inseparable from their individuality, and he
imagines that for these individuals there can exist no other “well-
being” than that which is determined by their position as rentiers.

* [The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:] Who, except Stirner, is
able to attribute such moral absurdities to the immoral revolutionary proletarians,
who, as the whole civilised world knows (Berlin, being merely “educated” [jebildet], of
course does not belong to the civilised world), have the wicked intention not “honestly
to earn” their “enjoyment” but to take it by conquest!

3 This passage is enclosed in square brackets in the manuscript. — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

219

He believes further that a society which has still to wage a struggle
against rentiers and the like, is already organised in a communist
way.* The communists, at any rate, will have no scruples about
overthrowing the rule of the bourgeoisie and abolishing its “well-
being”, as soon as they are strong enough to do so.** It does not
matter to them at all whether this “well-being” common to their
enemies and determined by class relations also appeals as personal
“well-being” to a sentimentality which is narrow-mindedly presumed
to exist.

Third corollary.

On page 190, in communist society

“worry arises again in the form of labour”.

The good citizen “Stirner”, who is already rejoicing that he will
again find his beloved “worry” in communism, has nevertheless
miscalculated this time. “Worry” is nothing but the mood of
oppression and anxiety which in the middle class is the necessary
companion of labour, of beggarly activity for securing scanty
earnings. “Worry” flourishes in its purest form among the German
good burghers, where it is chronic and “always identical with itself”,
miserable and contemptible, whereas the poverty of the proletarian
assumes an acute, sharp form, drives him into a life-and-death
struggle, makes him a revolutionary, and therefore engenders not
“worry”, but passion. If then communism wants to abolish both the
“worry” of the burgher and the poverty of the proletarian, it goes
without saying that it cannot do this without abolishing the cause of
both, i.e., “labour”.

We now come to the historical constructions of communism.

First historical construction.

“So long as faith was sufficient for the honour and dignity of man, no objection
could be raised against any, even the most arduous labour.” ... “The oppressed classes

* [The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:] And finally he makes
the moral demand that the communists should quietly allow themselves to be
exploited to all eternity by rentiers, merchants, factory-owners, etc., because they can-
not abolish this exploitation without at the same time destroying the “well-being” of
these gentlemen. Jacques le bonhomme, who poses here as the champion of the gros-
bourgeois, can save himself the trouble of preaching moralising sermons to the
communists, who can every day hear much better ones from his “good burghers”.

** [The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:] ... and they will have
no scruples about it precisely because for them the “well-being of all” regarded as
“corporeal individuals” is more important than the “well-being” of the hitherto
existing social classes. The “well-being” which the rentier enjoys as rentier is not the
“well-being” of the individual as such, but of the rentier, not an individual well-being
but a well-being that is general within the framework of the class.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

could tolerate their misery only so long as they were Christians” (the most that can be
said is that they were Christians so long as they tolerated their miserable position), “for
Christianity” (which stands behind them with a stick) “keeps their grumbling and
indignation in check” (p. 158).

“How ‘Stirner’ knows so well” what the oppressed classes could do,
we learn from the first issue of the Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung,
where “criticism in the form of a master-bookbinder” quotes the
following passage from an unimportant book: 2

“Modern pauperism has assumed a political character; whereas formerly the
beggar bore his fate submissively and regarded it as God’s will, the modern ragamuffin
asks whether he is forced to drag out his life in poverty just because he chanced to be
born in rags.”

It was due to this power of Christianity that during the liberation
of the feudal serfs the most bloody and embittered struggles were
precisely those against the spiritual feudal lords, and it was carried
through despite all the grumbling and indignation of Christianity as
embodied in the priests (cf. Eden, History of the Poor, Book I b ; Guizot,
Histoire de la civilisation en France ; Monteil, Histoire des Francois des
divers etats, etc.), while, on the other hand, the minor priests,
particularly at the beginning of the Middle Ages, incited the feudal
serfs to “grumbling” and “indignation” against the temporal feudal
lords (cf., inter alia , even the well-known capitulary of Char-
lemagne 72 ). Compare also what was written above in connection with
the “workers’ disturbances which flared up here and there”, about
the “oppressed classes” and their revolts in the fourteenth century. 0

The earlier forms of workers’ uprisings were connected with the
degree of development of labour in each case and the resulting form
of property; direct or indirect communist uprisings were connected
with large-scale industry. Instead of going into this extensive history,
Saint Max accomplishes a holy transition from the patient oppressed
classes to the impatient oppressed classes:

“Now, when everyone ought to develop into a man ” (“how,” for example, do the
Catalonian workers “know” that “everyone ought to develop into a man”?), “the
confining of man to machine labour amounts to slavery” (p. 158).

Hence, prior to Spartacus and the uprising of the slaves, it was
Christianity that prevented the “confining of man to machine

a The passage is from August Theodor Woeniger’s book Publicistische Abhand-
lungen, quoted by Carl Ernst Reichardt — “the master-bookbinder” — in his article
“Schriften uber den Pauperismus” (cf. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Holy
Family, in the present edition, Vol. 4, pp. 9-11). — Ed.

b Frederic Morton Eden, The State of the Poor, or, an History of the Labouring Classes
in England . — Ed.

c See this volume, p. 204. — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max 221

labour” from “amounting to slavery”; and in the days of Spartacus it
was only the concept of “man” that removed this relation and
brought about slavery. “Or did” Stirner “perhaps” “even” hear
something about the connection between modern labour unrest and
machine production and wanted here to give an intimation of this?
In that case it was not the introduction of machine labour that
transformed the workers into rebels, but the introduction of the
concept of “man” that transformed machine labour into slav-
ery. — “If that is so” then “it indeed really looks as though” we have
here a “unique” history of the workers’ movements.

Second historical construction.

“The bourgeoisie has preached the gospel of material enjoyment and is now
surprised that this doctrine finds supporters among us proletarians” (p. 159).

Just now the workers wanted to realise the concept of “man”, the
holy; now it is “material enjoyment”, the worldly; above it was a
question of the “drudgery” of labour, now it is only the labour of
enjoyment. Saint Sancho strikes himself here on ambas sus valientes
posaderas a — first of all on material history, and then on Stirner’s, holv
history. According to material history, it was the aristocracy that first
put the gospel of worldlv enjoyment in the place of enjoyment of the
gospel; it was at first for the aristocracy that the sober bourgeoisie
applied itself to work and it very cunningly left to the aristocracy the
enjoyment from which it was debarred by its own laws (whereby the
power of the aristocracy passed in the form of money into the
pockets of the bourgeoisie).

According to Stirner’s history, the bourgeoisie was satisfied to seek
“the holy”, to pursue the cult of the state and to “transform all
existing objects into imaginary ones”, and it required the Jesuits to
“save sensuousness from complete decay”. According to this same
Stirnerian history, the bourgeoisie usurped all power by means of
revolution, consequently also its gospel, that of material enjoyment,
although according to the same Stirnerian history we have now
reached the point where “ideas alone rule the world”. Stirner’s
hierarchy thus finds itself il entre ambas posaderas” .

Third historical construction.

Page 159: “After the bourgeois had given freedom from the commands and
arbitrariness of individuals, there remained the arbitrariness which arises from the
conjuncture of conditions and which can be called the fortuitousness of circumstances.
There remained — luck and those favoured by luck.”

Saint Sancho then makes the communists “find a law and a new
order which puts an end to these fluctuations” (the thingumbob),

a His two most ample buttocks. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

about which order he knows this much, that the communists should
now proclaim: “Let this order henceforth be holy!” (whereas he
ought now rather to have proclaimed: Let the disorder of my
fantasies be the holy order of the communists). “Here is wisdom”
(Revelation of St. John, 13 : 18). “Let him that hath understanding
count the number” of absurdities which Stirner — usually so verbose
and always repeating himself — [here] squeezes into a few [lines].

In its most general form the first proposition reads: after the
bourgeoisie had abolished feudalism, the bourgeoisie remained. Or:
after the domination of individuals had been abolished in “Stirner’s”
imagination, precisely the opposite remained to be done. “It indeed
really looks as though” one could bring the two most distant
historical epochs into a relationship which is the holy relationship,
the relationship as the holy, the relationship in heaven.

Incidentally, this proposition of Saint Sancho’s is not satisfied with
the above-mentioned mode simple of absurdity, it has to bring it to the
mode compose and bicompose a of absurdity. For, firstly, Saint Max
believes the bourgeoisie which liberates itself that, by liberating itself
from the commands and arbitrariness of individuals, it has liberated
the mass of society as a whole from the commands and arbitrariness
of individuals. Secondly, in reality it liberated itself not from the
“commands and arbitrariness of individuals”, but from the domina-
tion of the corporation, the guild, the estates, and hence was now for
the first time, as actual individual bourgeois, in a position to impose
“commands and arbitrariness” on the workers. Thirdly, it only
abolished the more or less idealistic appearance of the former
commands and former arbitrariness of individuals, in order to
establish instead these commands and this arbitrariness in their
material crudity. He, the bourgeois, wanted his “commands and
arbitrariness” to be no longer restricted by the hitherto existing
"commands and arbitrariness” of political power concentrated in
the monarch, the nobility and the corporations, but at most re-
stricted only by the general interests of the whole bourgeois
class, as expressed in bourgeois legislation. He did nothing more
than abolish the commands and arbitrariness over the commands
and arbitrariness of the individual bourgeois (see “Political
Liberalism”).

Instead of making a real analysis of the conjuncture of conditions,
which with the rule of the bourgeoisie became a totally different
conjuncture of totally different conditions, Saint Sancho leaves it in

J These terms were used by Charles Fourier (see Ch. Fourier, Theorie de I’unite
universelle) . — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

223

the form of the general category “conjuncture, etc.”, and bestows on
it the still more indefinite name of “fortuitousness of cir-
cumstances”, as though the “commands and arbitrariness of
individuals” are not themselves a “conjuncture of conditions”.
Having thus done away with the real basis of communism, i.e., the
definite conjuncture of conditions under the bourgeois regime, he
can now also transform this airy communism into his holy
communism. “It indeed really looks” as though “Stirner” is a “man
with only ideal”, imagined, historical “wealth” — the “ perfect ragamuf-
fin ”. See “the book”, p. 362.

This great construction or, rather, its major proposition is once
more and with great emphasis repeated on page 189 in the following
form:

“Political liberalism abolished the inequality of master and servant; it made people
masterless, anarchic” (!); “the master was then separated from the individual, from the
egoist, to become a spectre, the law or the state.”

Domination of spectres = (hierarchy) = absence of domination,
equivalent to the domination of the “omnipotent” bourgeois. As we
see, this domination of spectres is, on the contrary, the domination of
the many actual masters; hence with equal justification communism
could be regarded as liberation from this domination of the many.
This, however, Saint Sancho could not do, for then not only his
logical constructions of communism but also the whole construction
of “the free ones” would be overthrown. But this is how it is
throughout “the book”. A single conclusion from our saint’s own
premises, a single historical fact, overthrows the entire series of
penetrations and results.

Fourth historical construction. On page 350, Saint Sancho derives
communism directly from the abolition of serfdom.

I. Major proposition :

“Extremely much was gained when people succeeded in being regarded ” (!) “as
property-owners. Thereby serfdom was abolished and everyone who until then had
himself been property henceforth became a master .”

(According to the mode simple of absurdity this means: serfdom was
abolished as soon as it was abolished.) The mode compose of this ab-
surdity is that Saint Sancho believes that people became “property-
owners” by means of holy contemplation, by means of “regard-
ing” and “being regarded”, whereas the difficulty consisted in
becoming a “property-owner”, and consideration came later of
itself. The mode bicompose of the absurdity is that when the abolition
of serfdom, which at first was still partial, had begun to develop its
consequences and thereby became universal, people ceased to be

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

able to “succeed” in being “regarded” as worth owning (for the
property-owners those they owned had become too expensive);
consequently the vast mass “who until then had themselves been
property”, i.e., unfree workers, became as a result not “masters”, but
free workers.

II. Minor historical proposition, which embraces about eight cen-
turies, although one “will of course not perceive how momentous” it
is (cf. Wigand, p. 194).

“However, henceforth your having [ Dein Haben] and what you have [ Deine Habe ] no
longer suffices, and is no longer recognised; on the other hand, your working and your
work increases in value. We now respect your mastery of things as previously” (?) “we
respected your possession of them. Your labour is your wealth. You are now the
master or possessor of what you have obtained by work and not by inheritance” (ibid.).

“Henceforth” — “no longer” — “on the other hand” — “now” — “as
previously” — “now” — “or” — “not” — such is the content of this
proposition.

Although “Stirner” has “now” arrived at this, that you (viz.,
Szeliga) are the master of what you have obtained by work and not by
inheritance, it “now” occurs to him that just the opposite is the case
at present — and so he causes communism to be born as a monster
from these two distorted propositions.

III. Communist conclusion.

“Since, however, now everything is inherited and every farthing you possess
bears not the stamp of work, but of inheritance” (the culminating absurdity), “SO
everything must be remoulded.”

On this basis Szeliga is able to imagine that he has arrived at both
the rise and fall of the medieval communes, and the communism of
the nineteenth century. And thereby Saint Max, despite everything
“inherited” and “obtained by work”, does not arrive at any “mastery
of things”, but at most at “having” nonsense.

Lovers of constructions can now see in addition on page 421 how
Saint Max, after constructing communism from serfdom, then
constructs it again in the form of serfdom under a liege lord —
society — on the same model as he already, above, transformed the
means by which we earn something into the “holy”, by “grace” of
winch something is given to us. Now, in conclusion, we shall deal in
addition only with a few “penetrations” into the essence of
communism, which follow from the premises given above.

First of all, “Stirner” gives a new theory of exploitation which consists
in this:

“the worker in a pin factory performs only one piece of work, only plays into the hand
of another and is used, exploited by that other” (p. 158).

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

225

Thus, here “Stirner” makes the discovery that the workers in a
factory exploit one another, since they “play into the hands” of one
another; whereas the factory-owner, whose hands do not work at all,
cannot, therefore, exploit the workers. “Stirner” here gives a
striking example of the lamentable position in which communism
has put the German theoreticians. Now they have to concern
themselves also with mundane things like pin factories, etc.,. in
relation to which they behave like real barbarians, like Ojibbeway
Indians and New Zealanders.

Stirnerian communism “on the contrary says” (ibid.):

“All work should have the aim of satisfying ‘man’. Therefore, he” (“man”) “must
become master of it, i.e., be able to perform it as a totality.”

“Man” must become a master! — “Man” remains a maker of
pin-heads, but he has the consolation of knowing that the pin-head is
part of the pin and that he is able to make the whole pin. The fatigue
and disgust caused by the eternally repeated making of pin-heads is
transformed, by this knowledge, into the “satisfaction of man”.
O Proudhon!

A further penetration:

“Since communists declare that only free activity is the essence” ( iterum Crispinus d )
“of man, they, like every workaday mode of thought, need a Sunday, a time of exaltation
and devotion, in addition to their dull labour

Apart from the “essence of man” that is dragged in here, the
unfortunate Sancho is forced to convert “free activity”, which is for
the communists the creative manifestation of life arising from the
free development of all abilities of the “whole fellow” (in order to
make it comprehensible to “Stirner”), into “dull labour”, for our
Berliner notices that the question here is not one of the “hard work
of thought”. By this simple transformation the communists can now
also be transposed into the “workaday mode of thought”. Then, of
course, together with the work -day of the middle class its Sunday also
is to be found again in communism.

Page 161 : “The Sunday aspect of communism consists in the communist seeing in
you the man, the brother.”

Thus, the communist appears here as “man” and as “worker”.
This Saint Sancho calls (loc. cit.) “a dual employment of man by the
communists — an office of material earning and one of spiritual
earning”.

d Crispinus again. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

Here, therefore, he brings back even “earning” and bureaucracy
into communism which, of course, thereby “attains its final goal”
and ceases to be communism. Incidentally he has to do this, because
in his “union”, which he will construct later, each also is given a
“dual position” — as man and as the “unique”. For the present he
legitimises this dualism by foisting it on communism, a method we
shall find again in his theory of feudalism and of utilisation.

On page 344 “Stirner” believes that the “communists” want to
“settle the question of property amicably”, and on page 413 he even
makes them appeal to the self-sacrifice of people [and to] the
self-denying disposition of the capitalists!* The few non-
revolutionary communist bourgeois who made their appearance since
the time of Babeuf were a rare occurrence; the vast majority of the
communists in all countries are revolutionary. All communists in
France reproach the followers of Saint-Simon and Fourier with their
peaceableness and differ from the latter chiefly in their having
abandoned all hope of an “amicable settlement”, just as in Britain it
is the same criterion which chiefly distinguishes the Chartists from
the socialists. Saint Max could discover the communist view of the
“self-denying disposition of the rich” and the “self-sacrifice of
people” from a few passages of Cabet, the very communist who
most of all could give the impression that he appeals for devoument,
self-sacrifice. These passages are aimed against the republicans and
especially against the attacks on communism made by Monsieur
Buchez, who still commands the following of a very small number of
workers in Paris:

“The same thing applies to self-sacrifice ( devoument ); it is the doctrine of Monsieur
Buchez, this time divested of its Catholic form, for Monsieur Buchez undoubtedly
fears that his Catholicism is repugnant to the mass of the workers, and drives them
away. ‘In order to fulfil their duty ( devoir ) worthily’ — says Buchez — ‘self-sacrifice
(devoument) is needed.’ — Let those who can understand the difference between devoir
and devoument. — ‘We require self-sacrifice from everyone, both for great national
unity and for the workers’ association ... it is necessary for us to be united, always
devoted ( devoues ) to one another.’ — It is necessary, it is necessary — that is easy to say,
and people have been saying it for a long time and they will go on saying it for a very
long time yet without any more success, if they cannot devise other means! Buchez
complains of the self-seeking of the rich; but what is the use of such complaints? All
who are unwilling to sacrifice themselves Buchez declares to be enemies.

“‘If,’ he says, ‘impelled by egoism, a man refuses to sacrifice himself for others,
what is to be done?... We have not a moment’s hesitation in answering: society always

* [The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:] Here Saint Max again
ascribes to himself the wisdom of seizing and striking, as though his whole harangue
about the rebellious proletariat were not an unsuccessful travesty of Weitling and his
thieving proletariat — Weitling is one of the few communists whom he knows by the
grace of Biuntschli.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

227

has the right to take from us what our own duty bids us sacrifice to it.... Self-sacrifice is
the only means of fulfilling one’s duty. Each one of us must sacrifice himself, always
and everywhere. He who out of egoism refuses to fulfil his duty of self-sacrifice must
be compelled to do it.’ — Thus Buchez cries out to all: sacrifice yourselves, sacrifice
yourselves! Think only of sacrificing yourselves! Does this not mean to misunderstand
human nature and trample it underfoot? Is not this a false view? We might almost
say — a childish , silly view” (Cabet, Refutation des doctrines de VAtelier, pp. 19, 20).

Cabet, further, on page 22, demonstrates to the republican
Buchez that he inevitably arrives at an “aristocracy of self-sacrifice”
with various ranks, and then asks ironically:

“What then becomes of devoument ? What remains of devoument if people sacrifice
themselves only in order to reach the highest pinnacles of hierarchy}... Such a system
might originate in the mind of a man who would like to become Pope or Car-
dinal — but in the minds of workers!!!” — “M. Buchez does not want labour to
become a pleasant diversion, nor that man should work for his own well-being and
create new pleasures for himself. He asserts ... ‘that man exists on earth only to fulfil a
calling, a duty (une fonction, un devoir)’. ‘No,’ he preaches to the communists, ‘man, this
great force, has not been created for himself (n'a point ete fait pour lui-meme).... That is a
crude idea. Man is a worker ( ouvrier ) in the world, he must accomplish the work
(oeuvre) which morality imposes on his activity, that is his duty.... Let us never lose sight
of the fact that we have to fulfil a high calling (une haute fonction) — a calling that began
with the first day of man’s existence and will come to an end only at the same time as
humanity.' — But who revealed all these fine things to [M.] Buchez? (Mais qui a revele
toutes ces belles choses a M. Buchez lui-meme” — which Stirner would have translated: How
is it that Buchez knows so well what man should do?) — "Du reste, comprenne qui
pourra. A — Buchez continues: ‘What! Man had to wait thousands of centuries in order
to learn from you communists that he was created for himself and has no other aim
than to live in all possible pleasures.... But one must not fall into such an error. One
must not forget that we are created in order to labour (faits pour travailler), to labour
always, and that the only thing we can demand is what is necessary for life (la suffisante
vie), i.e., the well-being that suffices for us to carry out our calling properly.
Everything that is beyond this boundary is absurd and dangerous.’ — But just prove it,
prove it! And do not be satisfied merely with delivering oracles like a prophet! At the
very outset you speak of thousands of centuries! And then, who asserts that people have
been waiting for us down all the centuries? But have people perhaps been waiting for
you with all your theories about devoument, devoir, nationalite frangaise, association
ouvriere ? ‘In conclusion,’ says Buchez, ‘we ask you not to take offence at what we have
said.’ — We also are polite Frenchmen and we, too, ask you not to take offence”
(p. 31). — ’“Believe us,’ says Buchez, ‘there exists a communaute which was created long
ago and of which you too are members.’ — Believe us, Buchez,” concludes Cabet,
“become a communist!”

“Self-sacrifice”, “duty”, “social obligation”, “the right of society”,
“the calling, the destiny of man”, “to be a worker the calling of
man”, “moral cause”, “workers’ association”, “creation of what is
indispensable for life” — are not these the same things for which
Saint Sancho reproaches the communists, and for the absence of
which the communists are reproached by M. Buchez, whose solemn

a “However, let him who can understand it.” — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

reproaches are ridiculed by Cabet? Do we not find here even
Stirner’s “hierarchy”?

Finally, Saint Sancho deals communism the coup de grace on
page 169, by uttering the following proposition:

“By taking away also property" (!) “the socialists do not take into account that its
continuance is safeguarded by the peculiarities of human beings. Are only money and
goods property, or is not every opinion also something that is mine, that belongs to
me? Hence , every opinion must be abolished or made impersonal.”

Or does Saint Sancho’s opinion, insofar as it does not become the
opinion of others as well, give him command over anything, even
over another’s opinion? By bringing into play against communism
the capital of his opinion, Saint Max again does nothing but advance
against it the oldest and most trivial bourgeois objections, and he
thinks he has said something new because for him, the “educated”
Berliner, these hackneyed ideas are new. Destutt de Tracy among,
and after, many others said the same thing much better approxi-
mately thirty years ago, and also later, in the book quoted below. For
example:

“Formal proceedings were instituted against property, and arguments were
brought forward for and against it, as though it depended on us to decide whether
property should or should not exist in the world; but this is based on a complete
misunderstanding of our nature” ( Traite de la volonte, Paris, 1826, p. 18).

And then M. Destutt de Tracy undertakes to prove that propriete,
individuality and personnalite are identical, that the “ego” [ moi ] also
includes “mine” [mien], and he finds as a natural basis for private
property that

“nature has endowed man with an inevitable and inalienable property, property in the
form of his own individuality” (p. 17). — The individual “clearly sees that this ego is the
exclusive owner of the body which it animates, the organs which it sets in motion, all
their capacities, all their forces, all the effects they produce, all their passions and
actions; for all this ends and begins with this ego, exists only through it, is set in motion
through its action; and no other person can make use of these same instruments or be
affected in the same way by them” (p. 16). “Property exists, if not precisely
everywhere that a sentient individual exists, at least wherever there is a conative
individual” (p. 19).

Having thus made private property and personality identical,
Destutt de Tracy with a play on the words propriete and propre a , like
“Stirner” with his play on the words Mein h and Meinung, c Eigentum d
and Eigenheit, e arrives at the following conclusion:

a One’s own. — Ed.

b My, mine. — Ed.

' Opinion, view. — Ed.

d Property. — Ed.

‘ Peculiarity. — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

229

“It is, therefore, quite futile to argue about whether it would not be better for each
of us to have nothing of our own ( de discuter s’il ne vaudrait pas mieux que rien ne fut
propre a chacun de nous)... in any case it is equivalent to asking whether it would not be
desirable for us to be quite different from what we are, and even to examining
whether it would not be better for us not to exist at all” (p. 22).

“These are extremely popular”, now already traditional objections
to communism, and for that very reason “it is not surprising that
Stirner” repeats them.

When the narrow-minded bourgeois says to the communists: by
abolishing property, i.e., my existence as a capitalist, as a landed
proprietor, as a factory-owner, and your existence as workers, you
abolish my individuality and your own; by making it impossible for
me to exploit you, the workers, to rake in my profit, interest or rent,
you make it impossible for me to exist as an individual. — When,
therefore, the bourgeois tells the communists: by abolishing my
existence as a bourgeois, you abolish my existence as an individual ;
when thus he identifies himself as a bourgeois with himself as an
individual, one must, at least, recognise his frankness and shameless-
ness. For the bourgeois it is actually the case, he believes himself to be
an individual only insofar as he is a bourgeois.

But when the theoreticians of the bourgeoisie come forward and
give a general expression to this assertion, when they equate the
bourgeois’s property with individuality in theory as well and want to
give a logical justification for this equation, then this nonsense
begins to become solemn and holy.

Above “Stirner” refuted the communist abolition of private
property by first transforming private property into “having” and
then declaring the verb “to have” an indispensable word, an eternal
truth, because even in communist society it could happen that Stirner
will “have” a stomach-ache. In exactly the same way here his
arguments regarding the impossibility of abolishing private property
depend on his transforming private property into the concept of
property, on exploiting the etymological connection between the
words Eigentum and eigert and declaring the word eigen an eternal
truth, because even under the communist system it could happen
that a stomach-ache will be eigen to him. All this theoretical nonsense,
which seeks refuge in etymology, would be impossible if the actual
private property that the communists want to abolish had not been
transformed into the abstract notion of “property”. This transfor-
mation, on the one hand, saves one the trouble of having to say

Own, peculiar. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

anything, or even merely to know anything, about actual private
property and, on the other hand, makes it easy to discover a
contradiction in communism, since after the abolition of ( actual )
property it is, of course, easy to discover all sorts of things in
communism which can be included in the concept “property”. In
reality, of course, the situation is just the reverse.* In reality 1 possess
private property only insofar as I have something vendible, whereas
what is peculiar to me [meine Eigenheit ] may not be vendible at all. My
frock-coat is private property for me only so long as I can barter,
pawn or sell it, so long [as it] is [marketable]. If it loses that feature, if
it becomes tattered, it can still have a number of features which make
it valuable for me, it may even become a feature of me and turn me
into a tatterdemalion. But no economist would think of classing it as
my private property, since it does not enable me to command any,
even the smallest, amount of other people’s labour. A lawyer, an
ideologist of private property, could perhaps still indulge in such
twaddle. Private property alienates [entfremdet] the individuality not
only of people but also of things. Land has nothing to do with rent
of land, the machine has nothing to do with profit. For the landed
proprietor, land has the significance only of rent of land; he leases
his plots of land and receives rent; this is a feature which land can
lose without losing a single one of its inherent features, without, for
example, losing any part of its fertility; it is a feature the extent and
even the existence of which depends on social relations which are
created and destroyed without the assistance of individual landed
proprietors. It is the same with machines. How little connection there
is between money, the most general form of property, and personal
peculiarity, how much they are directly opposed to each other was
already known to Shakespeare better than to our theorising petty
bourgeois:

Thus much of this will make black, white; foul, fair;

Wrong, right; base, noble; old, young; coward, valiant.

This yellow slave...

Will make the hoar leprosy adored...

This it is

That makes the wappened widow wed again;

She, whom the spital-house and ulcerous sores

* [The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:] Actual private
property is something extremely general which has nothing at all to do with
individuality, which indeed directly nullifies individuality. Insofar as I am regarded as
a property-owner I am not regarded as an individual — a statement which is
corroborated every day by the marriages for money.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

231

Would cast the gorge at, this embalms and spices
To th’ April day again...

Thou visible god,

That solder’st close impossibilities,

And mukest them kiss! 3

In a word, rent of land, profit, etc., these actual forms of existence
of private property, are social relations corresponding to a definite
stage of production, and they are “individual” only so long as they
have not become fetters on the existing productive forces.

According to Destutt de Tracy, the majority of people, the
proletarians, must have lost all individuality long ago, although
nowadays it looks as if it was precisely among them that individuality
is most developed. For the bourgeois it is all the easier to prove on
the basis of his language the identity of commercial and individual,
or even universal, human relations, as this language itself is a
product of the bourgeoisie, and therefore both in actuality and in
language the relations of buying and selling have been made the
basis of all others. For example, propriete — property [ Eigentum ] and
characteristic feature [Eigenschaft]; property — possession [Eigentum]
and peculiarity [Eigentiimlichkeit]; “eigen” [“one’s own’’] — in the
commercial and in the individual sense; valeur, value, Wert b ;
commerce, Verkehr c ; echange, exchange , Austausch d , etc., all of which
are used both for commercial relations and for characteristic
features and mutual relations of individuals as such. In the other
modern languages this is equally the case. If Saint Max seriously
applies himself to exploit this ambiguity, he may easily succeed in
making a brilliant series of new economic discoveries, without
knowing anything about political economy; for, indeed, his new
economic facts, which we shall take note of later, lie wholly within
this sphere of synonymy.

Our kindly, credulous Jacques takes the bourgeois play on the
words Eigentum [property] and Eigenschaft [characteristic feature] so
literally, in such holy earnest, that he even endeavours to behave like
a private property-owner in relation to his own features, as we shall
see later on.

Finally, on page 421, “Stirner” instructs communism that

“ actually it” (viz., communism) “does not attack property, but the alienation of
property”.

3 William Shakespeare, Timon of Athens, Act IV, Scene 3. — Ed.
b Worth, value. — Ed.

c Intercourse, traffic, commerce, communication. — Ed.
d Exchange, barter, interchange. — Ed.

232

Karl Marx and Frederick Engel:

In this new revelation of his, Saint Max merely repeats an old
witticism already used repeatedly by, for example, the Saint-
Simonists. Cf ., for example, Legons sur V Industrie et les finances, Paris,
1832 a , where, inter alia, it is stated:

“Property will not be abolished, but its form will be changed ... it will for the first
time become true personification ... it will for the first time acquire its real, individual
character” (pp. 42, 43).

Since this phrase, introduced by the French and particularly
enlarged on by Pierre Leroux, was seized on with great pleasure by
the German speculative socialists and used for further speculation,
and finally gave occasion for reactionary intrigues and sharp
practices — we shall not deal with it here where it says nothing, but
later on, in connection with true socialism.* 5

Saint Sancho, [following the] example of Woeniger, whom
Reichardt [used], takes delight in turning the proletarians, [and
hence] also the communists, into “ragamuffins ” . He defines his
“ragamuffin” on page 362 as a “man possessing only ideal wealth”.
If Stirner’s “ragamuffins” ever set up a vagabond kingdom, as the
Paris beggars did in the fifteenth century, then Saint Sancho will be
the vagabond king, for he is the “perfect” ragamuffin, a man
possessing not even ideal wealth and therefore living on the interest
from the capital of his opinion.

C. Humane Liberalism

After Saint Max has interpreted liberalism and communism as
imperfect modes of existence of philosophical “man”, and thereby
also of modern German philosophy in general (which he was
justified in doing, since in Germany not only liberalism but
communism as well was given a petty-bourgeois and at the same time
highflown ideological form), after this, it is easy for him to depict the
latest forms of German philosophy, what he has called “humane
liberalism”, as perfect liberalism and communism, and, at the same
time, as criticism of both of them.

With the aid of this holy construction we now get the following
three delightful transformations (cf. also “The Economy of the Old
Testament”):

1. The individual is not man, therefore he is of no value — absence
of personal will, ordinance — “whose name will be named”: “master-
less ” — political liberalism, which we have already dealt with above.

a The author of these lectures is Isaac Pereire. — Ed.
b See this volume, p. 468. — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

233

2. The individual has nothing human, therefore no validity
attaches to mine and thine or property: “propertyless” — commu-
nism, which we have also already dealt with.

3. In criticism the individual should give place to man, now found
for the first time: “godless” =identity of “masterless” and “property-
less” — humane liberalism (pp. 180-81). — In a more detailed
exposition of this last negative unity, the unshakable orthodoxy of
Jacques reaches the following climax (p. 189):

“The egoism of property loses its last possession if even the words ‘my God’
become meaningless, for ” (a grand “for”!) “God only exists if he has at heart the
salvation of each individual, just as the latter seeks his salvation in God.”

According to this, the French bourgeois would only “lose” his
“last” “property” if the word adieu were banished from the
language. In complete accord with the preceding construction,
property in God, holy property in heaven, the property of fantasy,
the fantasy of property, are here declared to be supreme property
and the last sheet-anchor of property.

From these three illusions about liberalism, communism and
German philosophy, he now concocts his new — and, thanks be to the
“holy”, this time the last — transition to the “ego”. Before following
him in this, let us once more glance at his last “arduous life struggle”
with “humane liberalism”.

After our worthy Sancho in his new role of caballero andante , a and
in fact as caballero de la tristisima figura, h has traversed the whole of
history, everywhere battling and “blowing down” spirits and
spectres, “dragons and ostriches, satyrs and hobgoblins, wild beasts
of the desert and vultures, bitterns and hedgehogs” (cf. Isaiah, 34:
11-14), how happy he must now be, after his wanderings through all
these different lands, to come at last to his island of Barataria, 74 to
“the land” as such, where “Man” goes about in puris naturalibus c l Let
us once more recall his great thesis, the dogma imposed on him, on
which his whole construction of history rests, to the effect that:

“the truths which arise from the concept of man are revered as revelations of precisely
this concept and regarded as holy”; “the revelations of this holy concept”, even “with
the abolition of many a truth manifested by means of this concept, are not deprived of
their holiness” (p. 51).

We need hardly repeat what we have already proved to our holy
author in respect of all his examples, namely, that empirical

d Knight-errant. — Ed.

Knight of the most rueful countenance. — Ed.
1 In the pure natural state. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

relations, created by real people in their real intercourse and not at
all by the holy concept of man, are afterwards interpreted,
portrayed, imagined, consolidated and justified by people as a
revelation of the concept “man”. One may also recall his hierarchy.
And now on to humane liberalism.

On page 44, where Saint Max “in brief” “contrasts Feuerbach’s
[theological] view with our view”, at first nothing but phrases are
advanced against Feuerbach. As we already saw in regard to the
manufacture of spirits, where “Sdrner” places his stomach among
the stars (the third Dioscuros, a patron saint and protector against
seasickness /5 ), because he and his stomach are “different names for
totally different things” (p. 42), so, here, too, essence [ Weserf ]
appears first of all as an existing thing, and “so it is now said” (p. 44):

“The supreme being is, indeed, the essence of man, but precisely because it is his
essence, and not man himself, it makes absolutely no difference whether we see this essence
outside man and perceive it as ‘God’ or find it in man and call it the ‘essence of man’ or
‘Man’. I am neither God nor Man, neither the supreme being nor my essence — and,
therefore, in the main, it makes no difference whether I think of this essence as inside
me or outside me.”

Hence, the “essence of man” is presupposed here as an existing
thing, it is the “supreme being”, it is not the “ego”, and, instead of
saying something about “essence”, Saint Max restricts himself to the
simple statement that it makes “no difference” “whether I think of it
as inside me or outside me”, in this locality or in that. That this
indifference to essence is no mere carelessness of style is already
evident from the fact that he himself makes the distinction between
essential and inessential and that with him even “the noble essence of
egoism” finds a place (p. 71). Incidentally everything the German
theoreticians have said so far about essence and non-essence is to be
found already far better said by Hegel in his Logik.

We found the boundless orthodoxy of “Stirner” with regard to the
illusions of German philosophy expressed in concentrated form in
the fact that he constantly foists “Man” on history as the sole dramatis
persona and believes that “Man” has made history. Now we shall find
the same thing recurring in connection with Feuerbach, whose
illusions “Stirner” faithfully accepts in order to build further on
their foundation.

Page 77: “In general Feuerbach only transposes subject and predicate, giving
preference to the latter. But since he says himself: ‘Love is not holy because it is a
predicate of God (nor have people ever held it to be holy for that reason) but it is a
predicate of God because it is divine by and for itself,’ he was able to conclude that the

a Wesen can mean either essence or being. — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

235

struggle had to be begun against the predicates themselves, against love and
everything holy. How could he hope to turn people away from God, once he had left
them the divine ? And if, as Feuerbach says, the main thing for people has never been
God, but only his predicates, he could after all have allowed them to keep this tinsel,
since the puppet, the real kernel, still remained.”

Since, therefore, Feuerbach “ himself ’ says this, it is reason enough
for Jacques le bonhomme to believe him that people have esteemed
love because it is “divine by and for itself” . If precisely the opposite
of what Feuerbach says took place — and we “make bold to say this”
( Wigand , p. 157) — if neither God nor his predicates have ever been
the main thing for people, if this itself is only a religious illusion of
German theory — it means that the very same thing has happened to
our Sancho as happened to him before in Cervantes, when four
stumps were put under his saddle while he slept and his ass was led
away from under him.

Relying on these statements of Feuerbach, Sancho starts a battle
which was likewise already anticipated by Cervantes in the
nineteenth chapter, where the ingenioso hidalgo fights against the
predicates, the mummers, while they are carrying the corpse of the
world to the grave and who, entangled in their robes and shrouds,
are unable to move and so make it easy for our hidalgo to overturn
them with his lance and give them a thorough thrashing. The last
attempt to exploit further the criticism of religion as an independent
sphere (a criticism which has been flogged to the point of
exhaustion), to remain within the premises of German theory and
yet to appear to be going beyond them, and to cook from this bone,
gnawed away to the last fibres, a thin Rumford beggar’s broth 76 [for
“the] book” — this last attempt consisted in attacking material
relations, not in their actual form, and not even in the form of the
mundane illusions of those who are practically involved in the
present-day world, but in the heavenly extract of their mundane
form as predicates, as emanations from God, as angels. Thus, the
heavenly kingdom was now repopulated and abundant new material
created for the old method of exploitation of this heavenly kingdom.
Thus, the struggle against religious illusions, against God, was again
substituted for the real struggle. Saint Bruno, who earns his bread by
theology, in his “arduous life struggle” against substance makes the
same attempt pro aris et foci? as a theologian to go beyond the limits
of theology. His “substance” is nothing but the predicates of God
united under one name; with the exception of personality, which
he reserves for himself — these predicates of God are again nothing

For home and hearth. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

but deified names for the ideas of people about their definite,
empirical relations, ideas which subsequently they hypocritically
retain because of practical considerations. With the theoretical
equipment inherited from Hegel it is, of course, not possible even to
understand the empirical, material attitude of these people. Owing
to the fact that Feuerbach showed the religious world as an illusion of
the earthly world — a world which in his writing appears merely as a
phrase — German theory too was confronted with the question which
he left unanswered: how did it come about that people “got” these
illusions “into their heads”? Even for the German theoreticians this
question paved the way to the materialistic view of the world, a view
which is not without premises, but which empirically observes the
actual material premises as such and for that reason is, for the
first time, actually a critical view of the world. This path was already
indicated in the Deutsch-Franzdsische Jahrbiicher — in the Einleitung
zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechtsphilosophie and Zur Judenfrage , a
But since at that time this was done in philosophical phraseology, the
traditionally occurring philosophical expressions such as “human
essence”, “species”, etc., gave the German theoreticians the desired
reason for misunderstanding the real trend of thought and believing
that here again it was a question merely of giving a new turn to their
worn-out theoretical garment — just as Dr. Arnold Ruge, the Dottore
Graziano of German philosophy, imagined that he could continue as
before to wave his clumsy arms about and display his pedantic-farci-
cal mask. One has to “leave philosophy aside” ( Wigand , p. 187, cf.
Hess, Die letzten Philosophen, p. 8), one has to leap out of it and devote
oneself like an ordinary man to the study of actuality, for which there
exists also an enormous amount of literary material, unknown, of
course, to the philosophers. When, after that, one again encounters
people like Krummacher or “Sftrner”, one finds that one has long ago
left them “behind” and below. Philosophy and the study of the
actual world have the same relation to one another as onanism and
sexual love. Saint Sancho, who in spite of his absence of
thought — which was noted by us patiently and by him emphatical-
ly — remains within the world of pure thoughts, can, of course, save
himself from it only by means of a moral postulate, the postulate of
“ thoughtlessness ” (p. 196 of “the book”). He is a bourgeois who saves
himself in the face of commerce by the banqueroute cochenne , 77
whereby, of course, he becomes not a proletarian, but an impecu-
nious, bankrupt bourgeois. He does not become a man of the world,
but a bankrupt philosopher without thoughts.

a See present edition, Vol. 3, pp. 146-87. — Ed.

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The predicates of God handed down from Feuerbach as real
forces over people, as hierarchs, are the monstrosity which is
substituted for the empirical world and which “Stirner” finds in
existence. So heavily does Stirner’s entire “peculiarity” depend
merely on “prompting”. If “Stirner” (see also p. 63) reproaches
Feuerbach for reaching no result because he turns the predicate into
the subject and vice versa, he himself is far less capable of arriving at
anything, [for] he faithfully accepts these Feuerbachian predicates,
transformed into subjects, as real personalities ruling [the world], he
faithfully accepts these phrases about relations as actual relations,
attaching the predicate “holy” to them, transforming this predicate into
a subject, the “holy”, i.e., doing exactly the same as that for which he
reproaches Feuerbach. And so, after he has thus completely got rid
of the definite content that was the matter at issue, he begins his
struggle — i.e., his “antipathy” — against this “holy”, which, of
course, always remains the same. Feuerbach has still the conscious-
ness “that for him it is ‘only a matter of destroying an illusion’” — and
it is this with which Saint Max reproaches him (p. 77 of “the
book”) — although Feuerbach still attaches much too great impor-
tance to the struggle against this illusion. In “Stirner” even this
consciousness has “all gone”, he actually believes in the domination
of the abstract ideas of ideology in the modern world; he believes
that in his struggle against “predicates”, against concepts, he is no
longer attacking an illusion, but the real forces that rule the world.
Hence his manner of turning everything upside-down, hence the
immense credulity with which he takes at their face value all the
sanctimonious illusions, all the hypocritical asseverations of the
bourgeoisie. How little, incidentally, the “puppet” is the “real
kernel” of the “tinsel”, and how lame this beautiful analogy is, can
best be seen from “Stirner’s” own “puppet” — “the book”, which
contains no “kernel”, whether “real” or not “real”, and where even
the little that there is in its 491 pages scarcely deserves the name
“tinsel”. — If, however, we must find some sort of “kernel” in it,
then that kernel is the German petty bourgeois.

Incidentally, as regards the source of Saint Max’s hatred of
“predicates”, he himself gives an extremely naive disclosure in the
“Apologetic Commentary”. He quotes the following passage from
Das Wesen des Christenthums (p. 31): “A true atheist is only one for
whom the predicates of the divine being, e.g., love, wisdom, justice
are nothing, but not one for whom only the subject of these predicates
is nothing” — and then he exclaims triumphantly: “ Does this not hold
good for Stirner ?” — “Here is wisdom.” In the above passage Saint
Max found a hint as to how one should start in order to go “ farthest

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of all". He believes Feuerbach that the above passage reveals
the “essence” of the “ true atheist", and lets Feuerbach set him the
“task” of becoming a “true atheist”. The “unique” is “the true
atheist" .

Even more credulously than in relation to Feuerbach does he
“handle” matters in relation to Saint Bruno or “criticism”. We shall
gradually see all the things that he allows “criticism” to impose on
him, how he puts himself under its police surveillance, how it dictates
his mode of life, his “calling”. For the time being it suffices to
mention as an example of his faith in criticism that on page 1 86 he
treats “Criticism” and the “Mass” as two persons fighting against
each other and “striving to free themselves from egoism”, and
on page 187 he “accepts” both “for what they ... give themselves out
to be".

With the struggle against humane liberalism, the long struggle of
the Old Testament, when man was a school-master of the unique,
comes to an end; the time is fulfilled, and the gospel of grace and joy
is ushered in for sinful humanity.

The struggle over “man” is the fulfilment of the word, as written
in the twenty-first chapter of Cervantes, which deals with “the high
adventure and rich prize of Mambrino’s helmet”. Our Sancho, who
in everything imitates his former lord and present servant, “has
sworn to win Mambrino’s helmet” — Man — for himself. After having
during his various “campaigns” 3 sought in vain to find the
longed-for helmet among the ancients and moderns, liberals and
communists, “he caught sight of a man on a horse carrying
something on his head which shone like gold”. And he said to Don
Quixote-Szeliga: “If I am not mistaken, there is someone

approaching us bearing on his head that helmet of Mambrino, about
which I swore the oath you know of.” “Take good care of what you
say, your worship, and even greater care of what you do,” replied
Don Quixote, who by now has become wiser. “Tell me, can you not
see that knight coming towards us on a dapple-grey steed with a
gold helmet on his head?” — “What I see and perceive,” replies Don
Quixote, “is nothing but a man on a grey ass like yours with
something glittering on his head.” — “Why, that is Mambrino’s
helmet,” says Sancho.

3 In the German original the word Ausziige is used which can mean departures,
campaigns or extracts, abstracts. — Ed.

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Meanwhile, at a gentle trot there approaches them Bruno, the holy
barber, on his small ass, criticism, with his barber’s basin on his head;
Saint Sancho sets on him lance in hand. Saint Bruno jumps from his
ass, drops the basin (for which reason we saw him here at the Council
without the basin) and rushes off across country, “for he is the Critic
himself”. Saint Sancho with great joy picks up the helmet of
Mambrino, and to Don Quixote’s remark that it looks exactly like a
barber’s basin he replies: “This famous, enchanted helmet, which
has become ‘ghostly’, undoubtedly fell into the hands of a man who
was unable to appreciate its worth, and so he melted down one half
of it and hammered out the other half in such a way that, as you
say, it appears to be a barber’s basin; in any case, whatever it may
look like to the vulgar eye, for me, since I know its value, that is a
matter of indifference.”

“The second splendour, the second property, has now been won!”

Now that he has gained his helmet, “man", he puts himself in
opposition to him, behaves towards him as towards his “most
irreconcilable enemy” and declares outright to him (why, we shall see
later) that he (Saint Sancho) is not “man”, but an “unhuman being,
the inhuman”. In the guise of this “inhuman”, he now moves to
Sierra-Morena, in order to prepare himself by acts of penitence for
the splendour of the New Testament. There he strips himself “stark
naked” (p. 1 84) in order to achieve his peculiarity and surpass what his
predecessor in Cervantes does in chapter twenty-five:

“And hurriedly stripping off his breeches, he stood in his skin and his shirt. And
then, without more ado, he took two goat leaps into the air turning head over heels,
thereby revealing such things as caused his trusty armour-bearer to turn Rosinante
aside, so as not to see them.”

The “inhuman” far surpasses its mundane prototype. It “ resolutely
turns its back on itself and thus also turns away from the disquieting
critic”, and “leaves him behind”. The “ inhuman ” then enters into an
argument with criticism that has been “left behind”; it “despises it-
self”, it “conceives itself in comparison with another”, it “commands
God”, it “seeks its better self outside itself”, it does penance for not yet
being unique, it declares itself to be the unique, “the egoistical and the
unique ” — although it was hardly necessary for it to state this after
having resolutely turned its back on itself. The “inhuman” has
accomplished all this by its own efforts (see Pfister, Geschichte der
Teutschen ) and now, purified and triumphant, it rides on its ass into
the kingdom of the unique.

End of the Old Testament

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THE NEW TESTAMENT: “EGO ” 78
1. The Economy of the New Testament

Whereas in the Old Testament the object of our edification was
“unique” logic in the framework of the past, we are now confronted
by the present time in the framework of “unique” logic. We have
already thrown sufficient light on the “unique” in his manifold
antediluvian “refractions” — as man, Caucasian Caucasian, perfect
Christian, truth of humane liberalism, negative unity of realism and
idealism, etc., etc. Along with the historical construction of the
“ego”, the “ego” itself also collapses. This “ego”, the end of the
historical construction, is no “corporeal” ego, carnally procreated by
man and woman, which needs no construction in order to exist; it is
an “ego” spiritually created by two categories, “idealism” and
“realism,” a merely conceptual existence.

The New Testament, which has already been dissolved together
with its premise, the Old Testament, possesses a domestic
economy that is literally as wisely designed as that of the Old, namely
the same “with various transformations”, as can be seen from the
following table:

I. Peculiarity= the ancients, child, Negro, etc., in their truth, i.e.,
development from the “world of things” to one’s “own” outlook
and taking possession of this world. Among the ancients this led
to riddance of the world, among the moderns — riddance of spirit,
among the liberals — riddance of the individual, among the com-
munists — riddance of property, among the • humane [liber-
als] — riddance of God : hence it led in general to the category of
riddance (freedom) as the goal. The negated category of riddance
is peculiarity, which of course has no other content than this rid-
dance. Peculiarity is the philosophically constructed quality of all
the qualities of Stirner’s individual.

II. The owner — as such Stirner has penetrated beyond the un-
truthfulness of the world of things and the world of spirit; hence
the moderns, the phase of Christianity within the logical develop-
ment: youth, Mongol. — Just as the moderns divide into the triply
determined free ones, so the owner falls into three further deter-
mi nations:

1. My power, corresponding to political liberalism, where the
truth of right is brought to light and right as the power of “man”
is resolved in power as the right of the “ego”. The struggle
against the state as such.

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2. My intercourse, corresponding to communism, whereby the
truth of society is brought to light and society (in its forms of
prison society, family, state, bourgeois society, etc.) as inter-
course mediated by “man” is resolved in the intercourse of
the “ego”.

3. My self-enjoyment, corresponding to critical, humane liber-
alism, in which the truth of criticism, the consumption, dissolu-
tion and truth of absolute self-consciousness, comes to light as
self-consumption, and criticism as dissolution in the interests
of man is transformed into dissolution in the interests of the
“ego”.

THe peculiarity of the individuals was resolved, as we have
seen, in the universal category of peculiarity, which was the
negation of riddance, of freedom in general. A description of
the special qualities of the individual, therefore, can again only
consist in the negation of this “freedom” in its three “refrac-
tions”; each of these negative freedoms is now converted by its
negation into a positive quality. Obviously, just as in the Old
Testament riddance of the world of things and the world of
thoughts was already regarded as the acquisition of both these
worlds, so here also it is a matter of course that this peculiarity or
acquisition of things and thoughts is in its turn represented as
perfect riddance.

The “ego” with its property, its world, consisting of the
qualities just “pointed out”, is owner. As self-enjoying and
self-consuming, it is the “ego” raised to the second power, the
owner of the owner, it being as much rid of the owner as the
owner belongs to it; the result is “absolute negativity” in its dual
determination as indifference, “unconcern” 3 and negative
relation to itself, the owner. Its property in respect of the world
and its riddance of the world is now transformed into this
negative relation to itself, into this self-dissolution and self-
ownership of the owner. The ego, thus determined, is —

III. The unique, who again, therefore, has no other content
than that of owner plus the philosophical determination of the
“negative relation to himself”. The profound Jacques pretends
that there is nothing to say about this unique, because it is a corpo-
real, not constructed individual. But the matter here is rather the
same as in the case of Hegel’s absolute idea at the end of the Logik
and of absolute personality at the end of the Encyklopadie, about
which there is likewise nothing to say because the construction
contains everything that can be said about such constructed per-

3 In the manuscript the Berlin dialect form Jleichjiiltigkeit (unconcern) is used. — Ed.

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sonalities. Hegel knows this and does not mind admitting it,
whereas Stirner hypocritically maintains that his “unique” is also
something different from the constructed unique alone, but
something that cannot be expressed, viz., a corporeal individual.

This hypocritical appearance vanishes if the thing is reversed,
if the unique is defined as owner, and it is said of the owner that
he has the universal category of peculiarity as his universal de-
termination. This not only says everything that is “ sayable ” about
the unique, but also what he is in general — minus the fantasy of
Jacques le bonhomme about him.

“O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of the unique! How
incomprehensible are his thoughts, and his ways past finding out!” 3

“Lo, these are parts of his ways: but how little a portion is heard of him!”
(Job 26: 14.)

2. The Phenomenology of the Egoist in Agreement
with Himself, or the Theory of Justification

As we have already seen in “The Economy of the Old Testament”
and afterwards, Saint Sancho’s true egoist in agreement with himself
must on no account be confused with the trivial, everyday egoist, the
“egoist in the ordinary sense”. Rather he has as his presupposition both
this latter (the one in thrall to the world of things, child, Negro,
ancient, etc.) and the selfless egoist (the one in thrall to the world of
thoughts, youth, Mongol, modern, etc.). It is, however, part of the
nature of the secrets of the unique that this antithesis and the
negative unity which follows from it — the “ egoist in agreement with
himself ’ — can be examined only now, in the New Testament.

Since Saint Max wishes to present the “true egoist” as something
quite new, as the goal of all preceding history, he must, on the one
hand, prove to the selfless, the advocates of devoument, that they are
egoists against their will, and he must prove to the egoists in the
ordinary sense that they are selfless, that they are not true, holy,
egoists. — Let us begin with the first, with the selfless.

We have already seen countless times that in the world of Jacques
le bonhomme everyone is obsessed by the holy. “Nevertheless it
makes a difference” whether “one is educated or uneducated”. The
educated, who are occupied with pure thought, confront us here as
“obsessed” by the holy par excellence. They are the “selfless” in their
practical guise.

3 Romans 11:33 (paraphrased). — Ed.

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“Who then is selfless? Completely” (!) “most” (!!) "likely” (!!!) “he who stakes
everything else on one thing, one aim, one purpose, one passion.... He is ruled
by a passion to which he sacrifices all others. And are these selfless not selfish,
perhaps? Since they possess only a single ruling passion, they are concerned only with a
single satisfaction, but the more ardently on that account. All their deeds and actions
are egoistic, but it is a one-sided, concealed, narrow egoism ; it is — obsession” (p. 99).

Hence, according to Saint Sancho, they possess only a single ruling
passion; ought they to be concerned also with the passions which not
they, but others possess, in order to rise to an all-round, unconcealed,
unrestricted egoism, in order to correspond to this alien scale of
“holy” egoism?

In this passage are incidentally introduced also the “miser” and
the “ pleasure-seeker ” (probably because Stirner thinks that he seeks
“ pleasure ” as such, holy pleasure, and not all sorts of real pleasures),
as also “Robespierre, for example, Saint-Just, and so on” (p.100) as
examples of “selfless, obsessed egoists”. “From a certain moral point
of view it is argued” (i.e., our holy “egoist in agreement with
himself” argues from his own point of view in extreme disagreement
with himself) “approximately as follows”:

“But if I sacrifice other passions to one passion, I still do not thereby sacrifice myself
to this passion, and I do not sacrifice anything thanks to which I am truly I myself”
(p. 386).

Saint Max is compelled by these two propositions “in disagreement
with each other” to make the “paltry” distinction that one may well
sacrifice six “for example”, or seven, “and so on”, passions to a
single other passion without ceasing to be “truly I myself”, but by no
means ten passions, or a still greater number. Of course, neither
Robespierre nor Saint-Just was “ truly I myself”, just as neither
was truly “man”, but they were truly Robespierre and Saint-Just,
those unique, incomparable individuals.

The trick of proving to the “selfless” that they are egoists is an old
dodge, sufficiently exploited already by Helvetius and Bentham.
Saint Sancho’s “own” trick consists in the transformation of “egoists
in the ordinary sense”, the bourgeois, into non-egoists. Helvetius
and Bentham, at any rate, prove to the bourgeois that by their
narrow-mindedness they in practice harm themselves, but Saint Max’s
“own” trick consists in proving that they do not correspond to the
“ideal”, the “concept”, the “essence”, the “calling”, etc., of the egoist
and that their attitude towards themselves is not that of absolute
negation. Here again he has in mind only his German petty
bourgeois. Let us point out, incidentally, that whereas on page 99
our saint makes the “miser” figure as a “selfless egoist”, on page 78,

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on the other hand, the “avaricious one” is included among “egoists
in the ordinary sense”, among the “impure, unholy”.

This second class of the hitherto existing egoists is defined on
page 99 as follows:

“These people” (the bourgeois) “are therefore not selfless, not inspired, not ideal,
not consistent, not enthusiasts; they are egoists in the ordinary sense, selfish people,
thinking of their own advantage, sober, calculating, etc.”

Since “the book” is not all of a piece, we have already had
occasion, in connection with “whimsy” and “political liberalism”, to
see how Stirner achieves the trick of transforming the bourgeois into
non-egoists, chiefly owing to his great ignorance of real people and
conditions. This same ignorance serves him here as a lever.

“This” (i.e., Stirner’s fantasy about unselfishness) “is repugnant to the stubborn
brain of worldly man but for thousands of years he at least succumbed so far that he
had to bend his obstinate neck and worship higher powers” (p. 104). The egoists in the
ordinary sense “behave half clerically and half in a worldly way, they serve both God
and Mammon” (p. 105).

We learn on page 78: “The Mammon of heaven and the God of
the world both demand precisely the same degree of self-denial" ,
hence it is impossible to understand how self-denial for Mammon
and self-denial for God can be opposed to each other as “worldly”
and “clerical”.

On page 105-106, Jacques le bonhomme asks himself:

“How does it happen, then, that the egoism of those who assert their personal
interest nevertheless constantly succumbs to a clerical or school-masterly, i.e., an ideal,
interest?”

(Here, one must in passing “point out” that in this passage the
bourgeois are depicted as representatives of personal interests.) It
happens because:

“Their personality seems to them too small, too unimportant — as indeed it is— to
lay claim to everything and be able to assert itself fully. A sure sign of this is the
fact that they divide themselves into two persons, an eternal and a temporal; on
Sundays they take care of the eternal aspect and on weekdays the temporal. They have
the priest within them, therefore they cannot get rid of him.”

Sancho experiences some scruples here; he asks anxiously whether
“the same thing will happen” to peculiarity, the egoism in the
extraordinary sense.

We shall see that it is not without grounds that this anxious
question is asked. Before the cock has crowed twice, Saint Jacob
(Jacques le bonhomme) will have “ denied ” himself thrice. 3

Cf. Mark 14 : 30. — Ed.

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He discovers to his great displeasure that the two sides prominent-
ly appearing in history, the private interest of individuals and the
so-called general interest, always accompany each other. As usual, he
discovers this in a false form, in its holy form, from the aspect of
ideal interests, of the holy, of illusion. He asks: how is it that the
ordinary egoists, the representatives of personal interests, are at the
same time dominated by general interests, by school-masters, by the
hierarchy? His reply to the question is to the effect that the
bourgeois, etc., “seem to themselves too small”, and he discovers a
“sure sign” of this in the fact that they behave in a religious way, i.e.,
that their personality is divided into a temporal and an eternal one,
that is to say, he explains their religious behaviour by their religious
behaviour, after first transforming the struggle between general and
personal interests into a mirror image of the struggle, into a simple
reflection inside religious fantasy.

How the matter stands as regards the domination of the ideal, see
above in the section on hierarchy.

If Sancho’ s question is translated from its highflown form into
everyday language, then “it now reads”:

How is it that personal interests always develop, against the will of
individuals, into class interests, into common interests which acquire
independent existence in relation to the individual persons, and in
their independence assume the form of general interests? How is it
that as such they come into contradiction with the actual individuals
and in this contradiction, by which they are defined as general
interests, they can be conceived by consciousness as ideal and even as
religious, holy interests? How is it that in this process of private
interests acquiring independent existence as class interests the
personal behaviour of the individual is bound to be objectified
[sich versachlichen], estranged [sich entfremden ], and at the same time
exists as a power independent of him and without him, created
by intercourse, and is transformed into social relations, into a series
of powers which determine and subordinate the individual, and
which, therefore, appear in the imagination as “holy” powers?
Had Sancho understood the fact that within the framework of
definite modes of production, which, of course, are not dependent
on the will, alien [fremde] practical forces, which are independent
not only of isolated individuals but even of all of them together,
always come to stand above people — then he could be fairly
indifferent as to whether this fact is presented in a religious
form or distorted in the fancy of the egoist, above whom everything
is placed in imagination, in such a way that he places nothing above
himself. Sancho would then have descended from the realm of

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speculation into the realm of reality, from what people fancy to what
they actually are, from what they imagine to how they act and are
bound to act in definite circumstances. What seems to him a product
of thought, he would have understood to be a product of life. He
would not then have arrived at the absurdity worthy of him — of
explaining the division between personal and general interests by
saying that people imagine this division also in a religious way and
seem to themselves to be such and such, which is, however, only
another word for “imagining”.

Incidentally, even in the banal, petty-bourgeois German form in
which Sancho perceives the contradiction of personal and general
interests, he should have realised that individuals have always started
out from themselves, and could not do otherwise, and that therefore
the two aspects he noted are aspects of the personal development of
individuals; both are equally engendered by the empirical conditions
under which the individuals live, both are only expressions of one and
the same personal development of people and are therefore only in
seeming contradiction to each other. As regards the position — deter-
mined by the special circumstances of development and by division
of labour — which falls to the lot of the given individual, whether he
represents to a greater extent one or the other aspect of the
antithesis, whether he appears more as an egoist or more as
selfless — that was a quite subordinate question, which could only
acquire any interest at all if it were raised in definite epochs of
history in relation to definite individuals. Otherwise this question
could only lead to morally false, charlatan phrases. But as a
dogmatist Sancho falls into error here and finds no other way out
than by declaring that the Sancho Panzas and Don Quixotes are born
such, and that then the Don Quixotes stuff all kinds of nonsense into
the heads of the Sanchos; as a dogmatist he seizes on one aspect,
conceived in a school-masterly manner, declares it to be characteris-
tic of individuals as such, and expresses his aversion to the other
aspect. Therefore, too, as a dogmatist, the other aspect appears to
him partly as a mere state of mind , devoument, partly as a mere
“ principle ”, and not as a relation necessarily arising from the
preceding natural mode of life of individuals. One has, therefore,
only to “get this principle out of one’s head”, although, according to
Sancho’s ideology, it creates all kinds of empirical things. Thus, for
example, on page 180 “social life, all sociability, all fraternity and all
that ... was created by the life principle 3 or social principle”. It is
better the other way round: life created the principle.

Stirner has “love principle”. — Ed.

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Communism is quite incomprehensible to our saint because the
communists do not oppose egoism to selflessness or selflessness
to egoism, nor do they express this contradiction theoretically
either in its sentimental or in its highflown ideological form; they
rather demonstrate its material source, with which it disappears of
itself. The communists do not preach morality at all, as Stirner does
so extensively. They do not put to people the moral demand: love
one another, do not be egoists, etc.; on the contrary, they are very
well aware that egoism, just as much as selflessness, is in definite
circumstances a necessary form of the self-assertion of individuals.
Hence, the communists by no means want, as Saint Max believes,
and as his loyal Dottore Graziano (Arnold Rugej repeats after him (for
which Saint Max calls him “an unusually cunning and politic
mind”, Wigand, p. 192), to do away with the “private individual” for
the sake of the “general”, selfless man. That is a figment of the
imagination concerning which both of them could already have
found the necessary explanation in the Deutsch-Franzosische
Jahrbiicher. Communist theoreticians, the only communists who have
time to devote to the study of history, are distinguished precisely by
the fact that they alone have discovered that throughout history the
“general interest” is created by individuals who are defined as “pri-
vate persons”. They know that this contradiction is only a seeming
one because one side of it, what is called the “general interest”, is
constantly being produced by the other side, private interest, and in
relation to the latter it is by no means an independent force with an
independent history — so that this contradiction is in practice
constantly destroyed and reproduced. Hence it is not a question
of the Hegelian “negative unity” of two sides of a contradiction,
but of the materially determined destruction of the preceding
materially determined mode of life of individuals, with the disap-
pearance of which this contradiction together with its unity also
disappears.

Thus we see how the “egoist in agreement with himself” as op-
posed to the “egoist in the ordinary sense” and the “selfless egoist”,
is based from the outset on an illusion about both of these and about
the real relations of real people. The representative of personal
interests is merely an “egoist in the ordinary sense” because of his
necessary contradiction to communal interests which, within the
existing mode of production and intercourse, are given an
independent existence as general interests and are conceived and
vindicated in the form of ideal interests. The representative of the
interests of the community is merely “selfless” because of his
opposition to personal interests, fixed as private interests, and

10—2086

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

because the interests of the community are defined as general and
ideal interests.

Both the “selfless egoist” and the “egoist in the ordinary sense”
coincide, in the final analysis, in self-denial.

Page 78: “Thus, self-denial is common to both the holy and unholy, the pure and
impure: the impure denies all better feelings, all shame, even natural timidity, and
follows only the desire which rules him. The pure renounces his natural relation to the
world.... Impelled by the thirst for money, the avaricious person denies all promptings
of conscience, all sense of honour, all soft-heartedness and pity; he is blind to all
consideration, his desire drives him on. The holy person acts similarly: he makes
himself a laughing-stock in the eyes of the world, he is ‘hard-hearted’ and ‘severely
just’, for he is carried away by his longing.’’

The “avaricious man”, shown here as an impure, unholy egoist,
hence as an egoist in the ordinary sense, is nothing but a figure on
whom moral readers for children and novels dilate, but that actually
occurs only as an exception, and is by no means the representative of
the avaricious bourgeois. The latter, on the contrary, have no need
to deny the “promptings of conscience”, “the sense of honour”,
etc., or to restrict themselves to the one passion of avarice alone. On
the contrary, their avarice engenders a series of other passions —
political, etc. — the satisfaction of which the bourgeois on no account
sacrifice. Without going more deeply into this matter, let us at once
turn to Stirner’s “self-deniai”.

For the self which denies itself, Saint Max here substitutes a
different self which exists only in Saint Max’s imagination. He makes
the “impure” sacrifice general qualities such as “better feelings”,
“shame”, “timidity”, “sense of honour”, etc., and does not at all ask
whether the impure actually possesses these properties. As if the
“impure” is necessarily bound to possess all these qualities! But even
if the “impure” did possess all of them, the sacrifice of these qualities
would still be no self-denial, but only confirm the fact — which has to
be justified even in morality “in agreement with itself” — that for the
sake of one passion several others are sacrificed. And, finally,
according to this theory, everything that Sancho does or does not do
is “self-denial”. He may or may not act in a particular manner [...].*

* [There is a gap here. An extant page, which has been crossed out and greatly
damaged, contains the following:] he is an egoist, his own self-denial. If he pursues an
interest he denies the indifference to this interest, if he does something he denies
idleness. Nothing is easier [...] for Sancho than to prove to the " egoist in the ordinary
sense ” — his stumbling-block — that he always denies himself, because he always denies
the opposite of what he does, and never denies his real interest.

In accordance with his theory of self-denial Sancho can exclaim on page 80: “Is
perhaps unselfishness unreal and non-existent? On the contrary, nothing is more
common!”

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249

Although* on* page 420 Saint Max now says:

“Over the portals of our [epoch] are written not the words ... ‘know thyself, [but]
‘turn yourself to account’” [Verwerte Dich]

(here our school-master again transforms the actual turning to
account which he finds in existence into a moral precept about
turning to account), nevertheless [for the] “egoist in the ordinary
[sense’ instead of for] the former “selfless egoist”, “the [Apollonic”
maxim 8,1 should read:

“Only know yourselves], only know what [you] are in reality and give up vour
foolish endeavour to be something different from what you are!” “For”: “This
leads to the phenomenon of deceived egoism, in which I satisfy not myself, but]
only one [of my desires, e.] g., the [thirst for] happiness. [ — All] your deeds and
[actions are secret], concealed ... [egoism,] unconscious egoism, [but] for that very reason
not egoism, but slavery, service, self-denial. You are egoists and at the same time not
egoists, inasmuch as you deny egoism ” (p. 217).

“No sheep, no dog, endeavours to become a real” egoist (p. 443);
“no animal” calls to the others: “Only know yourselves, only know

We are really very happy [about the “unselfishness”] of the consciousness of the
German petty [bourgeois]....

He immediately gives a good example of this unselfishness by [adducing]
Orphanage-F[rancke, ‘ O’Connell, Saint Boniface, Robespierre, Theodor Korner...].

O’Connell [...], every [child] in Britain knows this. Only in Germany, and
particularly in Berlin, is it still possible to believe that O’Connell is “unselfish”.
O’Connell, who “tirelessly works” to place his illegitimate children and to enlarge his
fortune, who has not for love exchanged his lucrative legal practice (£10,000 per
annum) for the even more lucrative job of an agitator (£20,000-30,000 per annum)
(especially lucrative in Ireland, where he has no competition): O’Connell who, acting
as middleman,' 1 “hard-heartedly” exploits the Irish peasants making them live with
their pigs while he. King Dan, holds court in princely style in his paiace in Merrion
Square and at the same time laments continually over the misery of these peasants,
“for he is carried away bv his longing”; O’Connell, who always pushes the movement
just as far as is necessary to secure his national tribute 0 and his position as chief, and
who every year after collecting the tribute gives up all agitation in order to pamper
himself on his estate at Derrynane. Because of his legal charlatanism carried on over
many years and his exceedingly brazen exploitation of every movement in which he
participated, O’Connell is regarded with contempt even by the English bourgeoisie,
despite his usefulness.

It is moreover obvious that Saint Max, the discoverer of true egoism, is strongly
interested in proving that unselfishness has hitherto ruled the world. Therefore he
puts forward the great proposition ( Wigand , p. 165) that the world was “not egoistic
for millennia”. At most he admits that from time to time the “egoist” appeared as
Stirner's forerunner and “ruined nations”.

* [Marx made the following note at the beginning of this page:] III. Consciousness.

a The word is in English in the manuscript. — Ed.

These two words are in English in the manuscript. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

what you are in reality”. — “It is your nature to be” egoistical, “you
are” egoistical “natures, i. e.”, egoists. “But precisely because you* are
that already, you have no need to become so” (ibid.). To what you
are belongs also your consciousness, and since you are egoists you
possess also the consciousness corresponding to your egoism, and
therefore there is no reason at all for paying the slightest heed
to Sdrner’s moral preaching to look into your heart and do penance.

Here again Stirner exploits the old philosophical device to which
we shall return later. The philosopher does not say directly: You are
not people. [He says:] You have always been people, but you were
not conscious of what you were, and for that very reason you were
not in reality True People. Therefore your appearance was not
appropriate to your essence. You were people and you were not
people.

In a roundabout way the philosopher here admits that a definite
consciousness is appropriate to definite people and definite cir-
cumstances. But at the same time he imagines that his moral demand
to people — the demand that they should change their conscious-
ness — will bring about this altered consciousness, and in people who
have changed owing to changed empirical conditions and who, of
course, now also possess a different consciousness, he sees nothing
but a changed [consciousness]. — It is just the same [with the
consciousness for which you are secretly] longing; [in regard to this]
you are [secret, unconscious] egoists — i.e., you are really egoists,
insofar as you are unconscious, but you are non-egoists, insofar as you
are conscious. Or: at the root of your present [consciousness lies] a
definite being, which is not the [being] which I demand; your
consciousness is the consciousness of the egoist such as he should not
[be], and therefore it shows that you yourselves are egoists such as
egoists should not be — or it shows that you should be different from
what you really are. This entire separation of consciousness from the
individuals who are its basis and from their actual conditions, this
notion that the egoist of present-day bourgeois society does not
possess the consciousness corresponding to his egoism, is merely an
old philosophical fad that Jacques le bonhomme here credulously
accepts and copies.* Let us deal with Stirner’s “touching example” of
the avaricious person. He wants to persuade this avaricious person,

* [The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:] This fad becomes most
ridiculous in history, where the consciousness of a later epoch regarding an earlier
epoch naturally differs from the consciousness the latter has of itself, e.g., the Greeks
saw themselves through the eyes of the Greeks and not as we see them now; to blame
them for not seeing themselves with our eyes — that is, “not being conscious of
themselves as they really were” — amounts to blaming them for being Greeks.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

251

who is not an “avaricious person” in general, but the avaricious
“Tom or Dick”; a quite individually defined, “unique” avaricious
person, whose avarice is not the category of “avarice” (an abstraction
of Saint Max’s from his all-embracing, complex, “unique” manifesta-
tion of life) and “does not depend on the heading under which other
people” (for example, Saint Max) “classify it” — he wants to persuade
this avaricious person by moral exhortations that he “is satisfying not
himself but one of his desires”. But “you are you only for a
[moment], only as a momentary being are you real. What [is
separated from you,] from the momentary being” is something
absolutely higher, [e.g., money. But whether] “for you” money is
“rather” [a higher pleasure], whether it is for you [something
“absolutely higher” or] not [...] a perhaps [“deny”] myself [? — He]
finds that I am possessed [by avarice] day and night, [but]
this is so only in his reflection. It is he who makes “day and night”
out of the many moments in which I am always the momentary
being, always myself, always real, just as he alone embraces in one
moral judgment the different moments of my manifestation of life
and asserts that they are the satisfaction of avarice. When Saint Max
announces that I am satisfying only one of my desires, and not
myself, he puts me as a complete and whole being in opposition to
me myself. “And in what does this complete and whole being consist?
It is certainly not your momentary being, not what you are at the
present moment” — hence, according to Saint Max himself, it consists
in the holy “being” ( Wigand , p. 171). When “Stirner” says that I
must change my consciousness, then I know for my part that my
momentary consciousness also belongs to my momentary being, and
Saint Max, by disputing that I have this consciousness, attacks as a
covert moralist my whole mode of life.* And then — “do you exist
only when you think about yourself, do you exist only owing to
self-consciousness?” ( Wigand , pp. 157-158.) How can I be anything
but an egoist? How can Stirner, for example, be anything but an
egoist — whether he denies egoism or not? “You are egoists and you
are not egoists, inasmuch as you deny egoism,” — that is what you
preach.

Innocent, “deceived”, “unavowed” school-master! Things are just
the reverse. We egoists in the ordinary sense, we bourgeois, know
quite well: Charite bien ordonnee commence par soi-meme, h and we have

* [Here Marx repeats the remark:] III (Consciousness).

a The following passage is damaged. — -Ed.
Charity begins at home. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

long had the motto: love thy neighbour as thyself, a interpreted in the
sense that each is his own neighbour. But we deny that we are
heartless egoists, exploiters, ordinary egoists, whose hearts cannot be
lifted up to the exalted feeling of making the interests of their
fellow-men their own — which, between ourselves, only means that
we declare our interests to be the interests of our fellow-men. [You]
deny the “ordinary” [egoism of the] unique egoist [only because] you
[“deny]” your [“natural] relations to the [world]”. Hence you do not
understand why we bring practical egoism to perfection precisely by
denying the phraseology of egoism — we who are concerned with
realising real egoistical interests, not the holy interest of egoism.
Incidentally, it could be foreseen — and here the bourgeois coollv
turns his back on Saint Max — that you German school-masters, if
you once took up the defence of egoism, would proclaim
not real, “mundane and plainly evident” egoism (“the book”,
p. 455), that is to say, “not what is called” egoism, but egoism in
the extraordinary, school-masterlv sense, philosophical or vaga-
bond egoism.

The egoist in the extraordinary sense, therefore, is “only now
discovered”. “Let us examine this new discovery more closelv”

(p. ID-

From what has been just said it is already clear that the egoists who
existed till now have only to change their consciousness in order to
become egoists in the extraordinary sense, hence that the egoist in
agreement with himself is distinguished from the previous type only
by consciousness; i.e., only as a learned man, as a philosopher. It
further follows from the whole historical outlook of Saint Max that,
because the former egoists were ruled only by the “holy”, the true
egoist has to fight only against the “holy”. “Unique” history has
shown us how Saint Max transformed historical conditions into
ideas, and then the egoist into a sinner against these ideas; how every
egoistic manifestation was transformed into a sin [against these]
ideas, [the power of] the privileged into a sin [against the idea] of
equality, into the sin of despotism. [Concerning the] idea of freedom
[of competition,] therefore, it could be [said in “the book”] that
[private property is regarded] by him [(p. 155) as“]the personal” [...]
great, [...] [selfless] egoists [...] essential and invincible [...] only to be
fought by transforming them into something holy and then asserting
that he abolishes the holiness in them, i.e., his holy idea about them,
[i.e.,] abolishes them only insofar as they exist in him as a holy one. b

a Galatians 5: 14. — Ed.

This paragraph is damaged. — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

253

Page 50*: “How you are at each moment you are as your creation, and it is precisely
in this creation that you do not want to lose yourself, the creator. You yourself are a
higher being than yourself, i.e., vou are not merely a creation, but likewise a creator;
and it is this that you fail to recognise as an involuntary egoist, and for that reason the
higher being is something foreign to you.”

In a somewhat different variation, this same wisdom is stated on
page 239 of “the book”:

“The species is nothing" (later it becomes all sorts of things, see “Self-Enjoyment”),
“and when the individual rises above the limitations of his individuality, it is precisely
here that he himself appears as an individual; he exists only by raising himself, he
exists only by not remaining what he is. otherwise he would be done for, dead."

In relation to these propositions, to his “creation”, Stirner at once
begins to behave as “creator”, “by no means losing himself in them”:

“You are vou only for a moment, onlv as a momentary being are you real.... At each
moment I am wholly what i am ... what is separated from you. the momentary being”,
is “something absolutely higher” ... ( Wigand , p. 170); and, on page 171 (ibid.), “your
being” is defined as "vour momentary being”.

Whereas in “the book” Saint Max says that besides a momentary
being he has also another, higher being, in the “Apologetical
Commentary” “the momentary being” [of his] individual is equated
with his “complete [and whole] being”, and every [being] as a “mo-
mentary being” is transformed [into an] “absolutely higher being”.
In “the book” therefore he is, at every moment, a higher being than
what he is at that moment, whereas in the Commentary”,
everything that he is not directly at a given moment is defined as an
“absolutelv higher being”, a holv being. — And in contrast to all this
division we read on page 200 of “the book”:

"I know nothing about a division into an ‘imperfect’ and a ‘perfect’ ego.”

“The egoist in agreement with himself” needs no longer sacrifice
himself to something higher, since in his own eyes he is himself this
higher being, and he transfers this schism between a “higher” and a
“lower being” into himself. So, in fact (Saint Sancho contra
Feuerbach, “the book”, p. 243), “the highest being has undergone
nothing but a metamorphosis”. The true egoism of Saint Max
consists in an egoistic attitude to real egoism, to himself, as he is “at
each moment”. This egoistic attitude to egoism is selflessness. From
this aspect Saint Max as a creation is an egoist in the ordinary sense;
as creator he is a selfless egoist. We shall also become acquainted with
the opposite aspect, for both these aspects prove to be genuine
determinations of reflection since they undergo absolute dialectics in
which each of them is the opposite of itself.

* [Marx wrote at the top of this page:] II (Creator and Creation).

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

Before entering more deeply into this mystery in its esoteric form,
one has to observe some of [its arduous] life battles.

[On pages 82, 83 Stirner achieves the feat of] bringing the most
general quality, [the egoist,] [into agreement] with himself as creator,
[from the standpoint of the world] of spirit:

[“Christianity aimed] at [delivering us from natural determination (determination
through nature), from desires as a driving force, it consequently wished that man
should not allow himself to be] determined [by his desires. This does not mean that] he
[should have ] no [desires], but that [desires] should not possess [him,] that [they]
should not become fixed, unconquerable, ineradicable. Could we not apply
these machinations of Christianity against desires to its own precept, that we
should be determined by the spirit...? ... Then this would signify the dissolution
of spirit, the dissolution of all thoughts. As one ought to have said there ... so one
would have to say now: We should indeed possess spirit, but spirit should not
possess us.”

“And they that are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with the
affections and lusts” (Galatians 5:24) — thus, according to Stirner,
they deal with their crucified affections and lusts like true owners.
He accepts Christianity in instalments, but will not let matters rest at
the crucified flesh alone, wanting to crucify his spirit as well,
consequently, the “whole fellow”.

The only reason why Christianity wanted to free us from the
domination of the flesh and “desires as a driving force” was because
it regarded our flesh, our desires as something foreign to us; it
wanted to free us from determination by nature only because it
regarded our own nature as not belonging to us. For if I myself am
not nature, if my natural desires, my whole natural character, do not
belong to myself — and this is the doctrine of Christianity — then all
determination by nature — whether due to my own natural character
or to what is known as external nature — seems to me a determination
by something foreign, a fetter, compulsion used against me,
heteronomy as opposed to autonomy of the spirit. Stirner accepts this
Christian dialectic without examining it and then applies it to our
spirit. Incidentally, Christianity has indeed never succeeded in
freeing us from the domination of desires, even in that juste milieu
sense foisted on it by Saint Max; it does not go beyond mere moral
injunctions, which remain ineffective in real life. Stirner takes moral
injunctions for real deeds and supplements them with the further
categorical imperative: “We should indeed possess spirit, but spirit
should not possess us” — and consequently all his egoism in
agreement with itself is reduced “on closer examination”, as Hegel
would say, to a moral philosophy that is as delightful as it is edifying
and contemplative.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

255

Whether a desire becomes fixed or not, i.e., whether it obtains
exclusive [power over us] — which, however, does [not] exclude
[further progress] — depends on whether material circumstances,
“bad” mundane conditions permit the normal satisfaction of this
desire and, on the other hand, the development of a totality of
desires. This latter depends, in turn, on whether we live in
circumstances that allow all-round activity and thereby the full
development of all our potentialities. On the actual conditions, and
the possibility of development they give each individual, depends
also whether thoughts become fixed or not — just as, for example, the
fixed ideas of the German philosophers, these “victims of society”,
qui nous font pitie , a are inseparable from the German conditions.
Incidentally, in Stirner the domination of desires is a mere phrase,
the imprint of the absolute saint. Thus, still keeping to the “touching
example” of the avaricious person, we read:

“An avaricious person is not an owner, but a servant, and he can do nothing for his
own sake without at the same time doing it for the sake of his master” (p. 400).

No one can do anything without at the same time doing it for the
sake of one or other of his needs and for the sake of the organ of this
need — for Stirner this means that this need and its organ are made
into a master over him, just as earlier he made the means for
satisfying a need (cf. the sections on political liberalism and
communism) into a master over him. Stirner cannot eat without at
the same time eating for the sake of his stomach. If the worldly
conditions prevent him from satisfying his stomach, then his stomach
becomes a master over him, the desire to eat becomes a fixed desire,
and the thought of eating becomes a fixed idea — which at the same
time gives him an example of the influence of world conditions in
fixing his desires and ideas. Sancho’s “revolt” against the fixation of
desires and thoughts is thus reduced to an impotent moral
injunction about self-control and provides new evidence that he
merely gives an ideologically high-sounding expression to the most
trivial sentiments of the petty bourgeois.*

* [The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:] Since they attack the
material basis on which the hitherto inevitable fixedness of desires and ideas
depended, the communists are the only people through whose historical activity the
liquefaction of the fixed desires and ideas is in fact brought about and ceases to be an
impotent moral injunction, as it was up to now with all moralists “down to” Stirner.
communist organisation has a twofold effect on the desires produced in the

For whom we feel pity. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

Thus, in this first example he fights, on the one hand, against his
carnal desires, and on the other against his spiritual thoughts — on
the one hand against his flesh, on the other against his spirit — when
they, his creations, want to become independent of him, their
creator. How our saint conducts this struggle, how he behaves as
creator towards his creation, we shall now see.

In the Christian “in the ordinary sense”, in the chretien “ simple ”, to
use Fourier’s expression,

“ spirit has undivided power and pays no heed to any persuasion of the ‘flesh’.
However, only through the ‘flesh’ can I break the tyranny of the spirit; for only when
man perceives also his flesh does he perceive himself wholly, and only when he
perceives himself wholly does he become perceptive or rational.... But as soon as the
flesh speaks and — as cannot be otherwise — in a passionate tone ... then he” (the chretien
simple ) “believes he hears devil voices, voices against the spirit ... and with good reason
comes out passionately against them. He would not be a Christian if he were prepared
to tolerate them” (p. 83).

Hence, when his spirit wishes to acquire independence in relation
to him, Saint Max calls his flesh to his aid, and when his flesh

individual by present-day relations; some of these desires — namely desires which exist
under all relations, and only change their form and direction under different social
relations — are merely altered by the communist social system, for they are
given the opportunity to develop normally: but others — namelv those originating
solely in a particular society, under particular conditions of [production] and
intercourse — are totally deprived of their conditions of existence. Which [of the
desires] will be merely changed and [which eliminated] in a communist [society] can
[only be determined in a practical] way, by [changing the real], actual [“desires”, and
not by making comparisons with earlier historical conditions].

The two expressions: [“fixed” and “desires”], which we [have just used in order to
be able] to disprove [this “unique” fact of] Stirner’s, [are of course] quite
inappropriate. The fact that one desire of an individual in modern society can be
satisfied at the expense of all others, and that this “ought not to be” and that this is
more or less the case with all individuals in the world today and that thereby the free
development of the individual as a whole is made impossible — this fact is expressed by
Stirner thus: “the desires become fixed” in the egoist in disagreement with himself,
for Stirner knows nothing of the empirical connection of this fact with the world as it is
today. A desire is already by its mere existence something “fixed”, and it can occur
only to Saint Max and his like not to allow his sex instinct, for instance, to become
“fixed”; it is that already and will cease to be fixed only as the result of castration or
impotence. Each need, which forms the basis of a “desire”, is likewise something
“fixed”, and try as he may Saint Max cannot abolish this “fixedness” and for example
contrive to free himself from the necessity of eating within “fixed” periods of
time. The communists have no intention of abolishing the fixedness of their desires
and needs, an intention which Stirner, immersed in his world of fancy, ascribes to
them and to all other men; they only strive to achieve an organisation of production
and intercourse which will make possible the normal satisfaction of all needs, i.e., a
satisfaction which is limited only by the needs themselves.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

257

becomes rebellious, he remembers that he is also spirit. What the
Christian does in one direction, Saint Max does in both. He is the
chretien “compose”, he once again reveals himself as the perfect
Christian.

Here, in this example, Saint Max, as spirit, does not appear as the
creator of his flesh and vice versa; he finds his flesh and his spirit
both present, and only when one side rebels does he remember that
he has also the other, and asserts this other side, as his true ego,
against it. Here, therefore, Saint Max is creator only insofar as he is
one who is “ also-otherwise-determined ”, insofar as he possesses yet
another quality besides that which it just suits him to subsume under
the category of “creation”. His entire creative activity consists here in
the good resolution to perceive himself, and indeed to perceive
himself entirely or be rational ,* to perceive himself as a “complete,
entire being”, as a being different from “his momentary being”, and
even in direct contradiction to the kind of being he is “momen-
tarily”.

[Let us now turn to one of the “arduous] life battles” [of our saint]:

[Pages 80, 81 : “Mv zeal] need not [be less than the] most fanatical, [but at the same]
time [I remain] towards [it cold as ice, sceptical], and its [most irreconcilable enemy;] I
remain [its judge, for I am its] owner.”

[If one desires to] give [meaning] to what Saint [Sancho] says about
himself, then it amounts ro this: his creative activity here is limited to
the fact that in his zeal he preserves the consciousness of his zeal, that
he reflects on it, that he adopts the attitude of the reflecting ego to
himself as the real ego. It is to consciousness that he arbitrarily gives
the name “creator”. He is “creator” only insofar as he possesses
consciousness.

“Thereupon, you forget yourself in sweet self-oblivion.... But do you exist only
when you think of yourself, and do you vanish when you forget yourself? Who does not
forget himself at every instant, who does not lose sight of himself a thousand times an
hour?” ( Wigand , pp. 157, 158).

This, of course, Sancho cannot forgive his “self-oblivion” and
therefore “remains at the same time its most irreconcilable
enemy”.

Saint Max, the creation, burns with immense zeal at the very time
when Saint Max, the creator, has already risen above his zeal by
means of reflection; or the real Saint Max burns with zeal, and the
reflecting Saint Max imagines that he has risen above this zeal. This

* Here, therefore. Saint Max completely justifies Feuerbach’s “touching example”
of the hetaera and the beloved. In the first case, a man “perceives” only his flesh or only
her flesh, in the second he perceives himself entirely or her entirely. See Wigand, pp. 170,
171.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

rising in reflection above what he actually is, is now amusingly and
adventurously described in the phrases of a novel to the effect that
he allows his zeal to remain in existence, i.e., he does not draw any
serious consequences from his hostility to it, but his attitude towards
it is “cold as ice”, “sceptical” and that of its “most irreconcilable
enemy”.

Insofar as Saint Max burns with zeal, i.e., insofar as zeal is his true
quality, his attitude to it is not that of creator; and insofar as his
attitude is that of creator, he does not really burn with zeal, zeal is
foreign to him, not a quality of him. So long as he burns with zeal he
is not the owner of zeal, and as soon as he becomes the owner, he
ceases to burn with zeal. As an aggregate complex, he is at every
instant, in the capacity of creator and owner, the sum total of all his
qualities, with the exception of the one quality which he puts in
opposition to himself, the embodiment of all the others, as creation
and property — so that precisely that quality which he stresses as his
own is always foreign to him.

No matter how extravagant Saint Max’s true story of his heroic
exploits within himself, in his own consciousness, may sound, it is
nevertheless an acknowledged fact that there do exist reflect-
ing individuals, who imagine that in and through reflection they
have risen above everything,* because in actual fact they never go
beyond reflection.

This trick — of declaring oneself against some definite quality as
being someone who is also-otherwise-determined, namely, in the
present example as being the possessor of reflection directed towards the
opposite — this trick can be applied with the necessary variations to any
quality you choose. For example, my indifference need be no less
than that of the most blase person; but at the same time I remain
towards it extremely ardent, sceptical and its most irreconcilable
enemy, etc.

[It should] not be forgotten that [the aggregate] complex of all his
[qualities, the owner] — in which capacity [Saint] Sancho [by reflect-
ing opposes one particular] quality — is in this [case nothing but

* [The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:] All this is in fact merely
a highflown description of the bourgeois, who controls each of his emotions so that he
should not sustain any loss, and on the other hand boasts about numerous qualities,
e.g., philanthropic zeal, towards which he must remain “cold as ice, sceptical and an
irreconcilable enemy”, in order not to lose himself as owner in his philanthropic zeal
but to remain the owner of philanthropy. Whereas the bourgeois sacrifices his
inclinations and desires always for a definite real interest, Saint Max sacrifices the
quality towards which he adopts the attitude of the “most irreconcilable enemy” for
the sake of his reflecting ego, his reflection.

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259

Sancho’s] simple [reflection about this] one quality, [which he has]
transformed [into his ego by] putting forward, instead of the whole
[complex, one] merely reflecting [quality and] putting forward
in opposition to each of his qualities [and to] the series [merely
the one] quality of reflection, an ego, and himself as the imag-
ined ego.

Now he himself gives expression to this hostile attitude to himself,
this solemn parody of Bentham’s book-keeping 81 of his own interests
and qualities.

Page 188: “An interest, no matter towards what end it may be directed, acquires a
slave in the shape of myself, if I am unable to rid myself of it; it is no longer my
property, but I am its property. Let us, therefore, accept the directive of criticism that
we should feel happy only in dissolution.”

“We!” — Who are “We?” It never occurs to “us” to “accept”
the “directive of criticism”. — Thus Saint Max, who for the mo-
ment is under the police surveillance of “criticism”, here demands
“the same well-being for all”, “equal well-being for all in one
and the same [respect]”, “the direct tyrannical domination of
religion ”.

His interestedness in the extraordinary sense is here revealed as a
heavenly disinterestedness.

Incidentally, there is no need here to deal at length with the fact
that in existing society it does not at all depend on Saint Sancho
whether an “interest” “acquires a slave in the shape of himself” and
whether “he is unable to rid himself of it”. The fixation of interests
through division of labour and class relations is far more obvious
than the fixation of “desires” and “thoughts”.

In order to outbid critical criticism, our saint should at least have
gone as far as the dissolution of dissolution, for otherwise dissolution
becomes an interest which he cannot get rid of, which in him
acquires a slave. Dissolution is no longer his property, but he is the
property of dissolution. Had he wanted to be consistent in the
example just given, [he should] [have treated his zeal against his]
own “zeal” as [an “interest”] and [behaved] towards it [as an “irre-
concilable] enemy”. [But he should have] also considered his [“ice-
cold” disinterestedness] in relation to his [“ice-cold” zeal] and beco-
me [just as wholly “ice-cold”] — and thereby, [obviously, he would
have spared] his original [“interest”] and hence himself the “tempta-
tion” to turn [in a circle] on the [heel] of speculation. — Instead, he
cheerfully continues (ibid.):

“I shall only take care to safeguard my own property for myself” (i.e., to safeguard
myself from my property) “and, in order to safeguard it, I take it back into myself at

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

any time, I destroy in it any inclination towards independence and absorb it before it
becomes fixed and can become a fixed idea or passion.”

How does Stirner “absorb” the persons who are his property!

Stirner has just allowed himself to be given a “vocation” by
“criticism”. He asserts that he at once absorbs this “vocation” again,
by saying on page 189:

“I do this, however, not for the sake of my human vocation, but because 1 call on
myself to do so.”

If I do not call on myself to do so, I am, as we have just heard, a
slave, not an owner, not a true egoist, I do not behave to myself as
creator, as I should do as a true egoist; therefore, insofar as a person
wants to be a true egoist, he must call himself to this vocation given
him by “criticism”. Thus, it is a universal vocation, a vocation for all,
not merely his vocation, but also his vocation.

On the other hand, the true egoist appears here as an ideal which
is unattainable by the majority of individuals, for (p. 434) “innately
limited intellects unquestionably form the most numerous class of
mankind” — and how could these “limited intellects” be able to
penetrate the mystery of unlimited absorption of oneself and the
world.

Incidentally, all these terrible expressions — to destroy, to absorb
etc. — are merely a new variation of the above-mentioned “ice-cold,
most irreconcilable enemy”.

Now, at last, we are put in a position to obtain an insight into
Stirner’s objections to communism. They were nothing but a
preliminary, concealed legitimisation of his egoism in agreement
with itself, in which these objections are resurrected in the flesh. The
“ equal well-being of all in one and the same respect ” is resurrected in the
demand that “we should [only] feel happv in [dissolution”. “Care ]” is
resurrected [in the form of the unique “care]” to secure [one's ego]
[as one’s property]; [but “with the passage of time]” [“care”] again
arises as to “how” [one can arrive] at a [unity — ] viz., unity [of creator
and creation.] And, finally, humanism re[-appears, which in the
form of the true] egoist confronts empirical individuals as an
unattainable ideal. Hence page 117 of “the book” should read as
follows: Egoism in agreement with itself really endeavours to
transform every man into a “secret police state”. The spy and sleuth
“reflection” keeps a strict eye on every impulse of spirit and body,
and every deed and thought, every manifestation of life is, for him, a
matter of reflection, i.e., a police matter. It is this dismemberment of
man into “natural instinct” and “reflection” (the inner plebeian —

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

261

creation, and the internal police — creator) which constitutes the
egoist in agreement with himself.*

Hess ( Die letzten Philosophen, p. 26) reproached our saint:

“He is constantly under the secret police surveillance of his critical conscience ....
He has not forgotten the ‘directive of criticism ... to feel happy only in dissolution’....
The egoist — his critical conscience is always reminding him — should never become so
interested in anything as to devote himself entirely to his subject”, and so on.

Saint Max “empowers himself” to answer as follows:

When “Hess says of Stirner that he is constantly, etc’ — what does this mean except
that when he criticises he wants to criticise not at random” (i.e., by the way: in the
unique fashion), “not talking twaddle, but criticising properly” (i.e., like a human
being)?

“What it means”, when Hess speaks of the secret police, etc., is so
clear from the passage by Hess quoted above that even Saint Max’s
“unique” understanding of it can only be explained as a deliberate
misunderstanding. His “virtuositv of thought” is transformed here
into a virtuosity in lying, for which we do not reproach him since it
was his only way out, but which is hardly in keeping with the subtle
little distinctions on the right to lie which he sets out elsewhere in
“the book”. Incidentally, we have already demonstrated — at greater
length than he deserves — that “when he criticises”, Sancho by no
means “criticises properly”, but “criticises at random” and “talks
twaddle”.

Thus, the attitude of the true egoist as creator towards himself as
creation was first of all defined in the sense that in opposition to a
definition in which he became fixed as a creation — for example, as
against himself as thinker, as spirit — he asserts himself as a person
also-otherwise-determined, as flesh. Later, he no longer asserts
himself as really also-otherwise-determined, but as the mere idea of
being also-otherwise-determined in general — hence, in the above
example as someone who also-does-not think, who is thoughtless or
indifferent to thought, an idea which he abandons again as soon as
its nonsensicalness becomes evident. See above on turning round on
the heel of speculation. 3 Hence the creative activity consisted here in
the reflection that this single determination, in the present case
thought, could also be indifferent for him, i.e., it consisted in
reflecting in general; as a result, of course, he creates only reflective

* [The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:] Incidentally, if Saint
Max makes “a Prussian officer of high rank” say: “Every Prussian carries his
gendarme in his heart”, it ought to read: the king’s gendarme, for only the “egoist in
agreement with himself” carries hh own gendarme in his heart.

See this volume, p. 259 . — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

definitions, if he creates anything at all (e.g., the idea of antithesis,
the simple essence of which is concealed by all kinds of fiery
arabesques).

As for the content of himself as a creation, we have seen that
nowhere does he create this content, these definite qualities, e.g., his
thought, his zeal, etc., but only the reflective definition of this
content as creation, the idea that these definite qualities are his
creations. All his qualities are present in him and whence they come
is all the same to him. He, therefore, needs neither to develop
them — for example, to learn to dance, in order to have mastery over
his feet, or to exercise his thought on material which is not given to
everyone, and is not procurable by everyone, in order to become the
owner of his thought — nor does he need to worry about the
conditions in the world, which in reality determine the extent to
which an individual can develop.

Stirner actually only rids himself of one quality by means of
another (i.e., the suppression of his remaining qualities by this
“other”). In reality, however, [as we] have [already shown,] he does
this only insofar as this quality has not only achieved free
development, i.e., has not remained merely potential, but also
insofar as conditions in the world have permitted him to develop in
an equal measure a totality of qualities, [that is to say,] thanks to the
division of [labour,] 3 thus making possible the [predominant pursuit]
of a [single passion, e.]g., that of [writing] books. [In general], it is an
[absurdity to assume], as Saint [Max does], that one could satisfy one
[passion], apart from all others, that one could satisfy it without at
the same time satisfying oneself, the entire living individual. If this
passion assumes an abstract, isolated character, if it confronts me as
an alien power, if, therefore, the satisfaction of the individual
appears as the one-sided satisfaction of a single passion — this by no
means depends on consciousness or “good will” and least of all on
lack of reflection on the concept of this quality, as Saint Max
imagines.

It depends not on consciousness, but on being; not on thought, but
on life; it depends on the individual’s empirical development and
manifestation of life, which in turn depends on the conditions
obtaining in the world. If the circumstances in which the individual
lives allow him only the [one]-sided development of one quality at the
expense of all the rest, [if] they give him the material and time to
develop only that one quality, then this individual achieves only a
one-sided, crippled development. No moral preaching avails here.

See this volume, pp. 254-5 5~Ed.

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263

And the manner in which this one, pre-eminently favoured quality
develops depends again, on the one hand, on the material available
for its development and, on the other hand, on the degree and
manner in which the other qualities are suppressed. Precisely
because thought, for example, is the thought of a particular, definite
individual, it remains his definite thought, determined by his
individuality and the conditions in which he lives. The thinking
individual therefore has no need to resort to prolonged reflection
about thought as such in order to declare that his thought is his own
thought, his property; from the outset it is his own, peculiarly
determined thought and it was precisely his peculiarity which [in
the case of Saint] Sancho [was found to be] the “opposite” of
this, a peculiarity which is peculiarity “as such”. In the case of an
individual, for example, whose life embraces a wide circle of varied
activities and practical relations to the world, and who, there-
fore, lives a many-sided life, thought has the same character
of universality as every other manifestation of his life. Conse-
quently, it neither becomes fixed in the form of abstract thought
nor does it need complicated tricks of reflection when the
individual passes from thought to some other manifestation of
life. From the outset it is always a factor in the total life of
the individual, one which disappears and is reproduced as
required.

In the case of a parochial Berlin school-master or author, however,
whose activity is restricted to arduous work on the one hand and the
pleasure of thought on the other, whose world extends from Moabit
to Kopenick and ends behind the Hamburger Tor , 82 whose relations
to this world are reduced to a minimum by his pitiful position in life,
when such an individual experiences the need to think, it is indeed
inevitable that his thought becomes just as abstract as he himself and
his life, and that thought confronts him, who is quite incapable of
resistance, in the form of a fixed power, whose activity offers the
individual the possibility of a momentary escape from his “bad
world”, of a momentary pleasure. In the case of such an individual
the few remaining desires, which arise not so much from intercourse
with the world as from the constitution of the human body, express
themselves only through repercussion , i.e., they assume in their
narrow development the same one-sided and crude character as does
his thought, they appear only at long intervals, stimulated by the
excessive development of the predominant desire (fortified by
immediate physical causes, e.g. [stomach] spasm) and are manifested
turbulently and forcibly, with the most brutal suppression of the

264

Karl Marx and Frederick Engel:

ordinary, [natural] desire [ — this leads to further] domination over
[thought.] As a matter of course, the school-master’s [thinking
reflects on and speculates about] this empirical [fact in a school-
masterly fashion. [But the mere announcement] that Stirner in
general “creates” [his qualities] .does not [explain] even their
particular form of development. The extent to which these qualities
develop on the universal or local scale, the extent to which they
transcend local narrow-mindedness or remain within its confines,
depends not on Stirner, but on the development of world
intercourse and on the part which he and the locality where he lives
play in it. That under favourable circumstances some individuals
are able to rid themselves of their local narrow-mindedness is
by no means due to individuals imagining that they have got
rid of, or intend to get rid of their local narrow-mindedness, but is
only due to the fact that in their real empirical life individuals,
actuated by empirical needs, have been able to bring about world
intercourse.*

The only thing our saint achieves with the aid of his arduous
reflection about his qualities and passions is that by his constant
crotchetiness and scuffling with them he poisons the enjoyment and
satisfaction of them.

Saint Max creates, as already said, only himself as a creation, i.e.,
he is satisfied with placing himself in this category of created entity.
His activity [as] creator consists in regarding himself as a creation,
and he does not even go on to resolve this division of himself into
[creator and] creation, which is his own [product]. The division [into
the “essential” and] the “inessential” becomes [for him a] permanent
life process, [hence mere appearance,] i.e., his real life exists only [in
“pure”] reflection, is [not] even actual existence; [for since this latter
is at every] instant outside [him and his reflection], he tries [in vain
to] present [reflection as] essential.

“But [since] this enemy” (viz., the true egoist as a creation) “begets himself in his
defeat, since consciousness, by becoming fixed on him, does not free itself from him,
but instead always dwells on him and always sees itself besmirched, and since this

* [The following passage is crossed out in the manuscript:] This specifically
revolutionary attitude of the communists to the hitherto existing conditions of the life
of the individuals has already been described above [see this volume, pp. 246, 255], In
a later profane passage Saint Max admits that the ego receives an “impulse” (in Fich-
te’s sense) from the world. That the communists intend to gain control over this
“impulse” — which indeed becomes an extremely complex and multifariously deter-
mined “impulse” if one is not content with the mere phrase — is, of course, for
Saint Max much too daring an idea to discuss.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

265

content of his endeavour is at the same time the very lowest, we find only an individual
restricted to himself and his petty activity” (inactivity), “and brooding over himself, as
unhappy as he is wretched" (Hegel)*.

What we have said so far about the division of Sancho into creator
and creation, he himself now finally expresses in a logical form: the
creator and the creation are transformed into the presupposing and
the presupposed ego, or (inasmuch as his presupposition [of his ego]
is a positing) into the positing and the posited ego:

“I for my part start from a certain presupposition since I presuppose myself; but my
presupposition does not strive for its perfection” (rather does Saint Max strive for its
abasement), “on the contrary, it serves me merely as something to enjoy and
consume” tan enviable enjoyment!). “I am nourished by my presupposition alone and
exist only bv consuming it. But for that reason” (a grand “for that reason”!) “the
presupposition in question is no presupposition at all, for since" (a grand “for since”!)
“I am the unique” (it should read: the true egoist in agreement with himself), “I know
nothing about the duality of a presupposing and presupposed ego (of an ‘imperfect’
and perfect’ ego or man)” — it should read: the perfection of my ego consists in this
alone, that at every instant I know myself as an imperfect ego, as a creation — "but" (a
magnificent “but”!) “the fact that I consume myself signifies merely that I am.” (It
should read: The fact that I am signifies here merely that in me I consume in
imagination the category of the presupposed.) “I do not presuppose myself, because I
really only posit or create myself perpetually” (viz., I posit and create myself as the
presupposed, posited or created) “and I am I only because 1 am not presupposed, but
posited” (it should read: and I exist onlv because I am antecedent to my positing)
“and, again, I am posited only at the moment when I posit myself, i.e., I am creator
and creation in one.”

Stirner is a “posited man”; since he is always a posited ego, and his
ego is “ also a man' ( Wigand , p. 183). “For that reason" he is a posited
man; “ for since” he is never driven by his passions to excesses,
“therefore" , he is what burghers call a sedate man, “but" the fact that
he is a sedate man “signifies merely” that he always keeps an account
of his own transformations and refractions.

What was so far only “for us” — to use for once, as Stirner does, the
ianguage of Hegei — viz., that his whole creative activity had no other
content than general definitions of reflection, is now “posited” by
Stirner himself. Saint Max’s struggle against “ essence ” here attains its
“final goal” in that he identifies himself with essence, and indeed
with pure, speculative essence. The relation of creator and creation is
transformed into an explication of self -presupposition, i.e., [Stirner
transforms] into an extremely “clumsy” and confused [idea] what
Hegel [says] about reflection in “the [Doctrine of Essence]”. [Since]

a G.W.F. Hegel, Phanomenologie des Geistes. B. Selbstbewusstsein. 3. Das ungliick-
liche Bewusstsein. — Ed.

b In the German original this is a pun: gesetzter Mann can mean “sedate man” or
“posited man”. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

Saint Max takes out one [element of his] reflection, [viz., positing
reflection, his fantasies become] “negative”, [because he] transforms
himself, etc., into “self-[presupposition”, in] contradistinction to
[himself as the positing] and himself as the posited, [and] transforms
reflection into the mystical antithesis of creator and creation. It
should be pointed out, by the way, that in this section of his Logik
Hegel analyses the “machinations” of the “creative nothing”, which
explains also why Saint Max already on page 8 had to “posit” himself
as this “creative nothing”.

We shall now “episodically insert” a few passages from Hegel’s
explanation of self-presupposition for comparison with Saint Max’s
explanation. But as Hegel does not write so incoherently and “at
random” as our Jacques le bonhomme, we shall have to collect these
passages from various pages of the Logik in order to bring them into
correspondence with Sancho’s great thesis.

“Essence presupposes itself and is itself the transcendence of this presupposition.
Since it is the repulsion of itself from itself or indifference towards itself, negative
relation to itself, it thereby posits itself against itself ... positing has no presupposition
... the other is only posited through essence itself... Thus, reflection is only the
negative of itself. Reflection in so far as it presupposes is simply positing reflection. It
consists therefore in this, that it is itself and' not itself in a unity" (“creator and
creation in one”) (Hegel, Logik, II, pp. 5, 16, 17, 18, 22).

One might have expected from Stirner’s “virtuosity of thought”
that he would have gone on to further researches into Hegel’s Logik.
However, he wisely refrained from doing so. For, if he had done so,
he would have found that he, as mere “posited” ego, as creation, i.e.,
insofar as he possesses existence, is merely a seeming ego, and he is
“ essence ”, creator, only insofar as he does not exist, but only imagines
himself. We have already seen, and shall see again further on, that
all his qualities, his whole activity, and his whole attitude to the
world, are a mere appearance which he creates for himself,
nothing but “juggling tricks on the tightrope of the objective”. His
ego is always a dumb, hidden “ego”, hidden in his ego imagined as
essence.

Since the true egoist in his creative activity is, therefore, only a
paraphrase of speculative reflection or pure essence, it follows,
“according to the myth”, “by natural reproduction”, as was already
revealed when examining the “arduous life battles” of the true
egoist, that his “creations” are limited to the simplest determinations
of reflection, such as identity, difference, equality, inequality,
[opposition,] etc. — determinations [of reflection] which he [tries] to
make clear for himself in [“himself”], concerning whom “the tidings
have [gone] as far as [Berlin]”. [Concerning] his presuppositionless

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Max Stirner

Drawing by Engels

(The inscription in German reads: “Max Stirner.

Drawn from memory by Frederick Engels. London, 1892 ”.)

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

269

[ego] we [shall] have occasion to “hear [a little] word” later on. See,
inter alia, “The Unique”. 3

As in Sancho’s construction of history the later historical phenome-
non is transformed, by Hegel’s method, into the cause, the creator,
of an earlier phenomenon, so in the case of the egoist in agreement
with himself the Stirner of today is transformed into the creator of
the Stirner of yesterday, although, to use his language, the Stirner of
today is the creation of the Stirner of yesterday. Reflection, indeed,
reverses all this, and in reflection the Stirner of yesterday is the
creation of the Stirner of today, as a product of reflection, as an
idea — just as in reflection the conditions of the external world are
creations of his reflection.

Page 216: “Do not seek in ‘self-denial’ the freedom that actually deprives you of
yourselves, but seek yourselves’’ (i.e., seek yourselves in self-denial), “ become egoists ,
each of you should become an all-powerful ego!”

After the foregoing, we should not be surprised if later on Saint
Max’s attitude to this proposition is again that of creator and most
irreconcilable enemy and he “dissolves” his lofty moral postulate:
“Become an all-powerful ego” into this, that each, in any case, does
what he can, and that he can do what he does, and therefore, of
course, for Saint Max, he is “all-powerful”.

Incidentally, the nonsense of the egoist in agreement with himself
is summarised in the proposition quoted above. First comes the
moral injunction to seek and, moreover, to seek oneself. This is
defined in the sense that man should become something that he so
far is not, namely, an egoist, and this egoist is defined as being an
“all-powerful ego”, in whom the peculiar ability has become resolved
from actual ability into the ego, into omnipotence, into the fantastic
idea of ability. To seek oneself means, therefore, to become
something different from what one is and, indeed, to become
all-powerful, i.e., nothing, a non-thing, a phantasmagoria.

We have now progressed so far that one of the profoundest
mysteries of the unique, and at the same time a problem that has
long kept the civilised world in a state of anxious suspense, can be
disclosed and solved.

Who is Szeliga? Since the appearance of the critical Literatur-
Zeitung (see Die heilige Familie, etc.) this question has been put by

3 See this volume, p. 433. — Ed.

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Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

everyone who has followed the development of German philosophy.
Who is Szeliga? Everyone asks, everyone listens attentively when he
hears the barbaric sound of this name — but no one replies.

Who is Szeliga? Saint Max gives us the key to this “secret of
secrets” .

Szeliga is Stirner as a creation, Stirner is Szeliga as creator. Stirner is
the “I”, Szeliga the “you”, in “the book”. Hence Stirner, the creator,
behaves towards Szeliga, his creation, as towards his “most
irreconcilable enemy”. As soon as Szeliga wishes to acquire inde-
pendence in relation to Stirner — he made a hapless attempt in
this direction in the Norddeutsche Blatter a — Saint Max “takes him back
into himself”, an experiment which was carried out against this
attempt of Szeliga’s on pages 176-79 of the “Apologetic Commen-
tary” in Wigand. The struggle of the creator against the creation, of
Stirner against Szeliga, is, however, only a seeming one: [Now]
Szeliga advances against his creator the phrases of this [creator
himself] — for example, the assertion “that [the mere,] bare body is
[absence of] thought” ( Wigand , p. 148). Saint [Max,] as we have seen,
[was thinking] only of [the bare flesh], the body before its
[formation], and in [this connection] he gave the body the
[determination] of being “the other of thought”, non-thought and
the non-thinking being, hence absence of thought; and indeed in a
later passage he bluntly declares that only absence of thought (as
previously only the flesh — thus the two concepts are treated as
identical) saves him from thoughts (p. 196).

We find a still more striking proof of this mysterious connection in
Wigand. We have already seen on page 7 of “the book” that the
“ego”, i.e., Stirner, is “the unique”. On page 153 of the
“Commentary” he addresses his “you”: “You” ... “are the content of
the phrase” , viz., the content of the “unique”, and on the same page it
is stated: “he overlooks the fact that he himself, Szeliga, is the content of
the phrase” . “The unique” is a phrase, as Saint Max says in so many
words. Considered as the “ ego ”, i.e., as creator, he is the owner of the
phrase — this is Saint Max. Considered as “you” , i.e., as creation, he is
the content of the phrase — this is Szeliga, as we have just been told.
Szeliga the creation appears as a selfless egoist, as a degenerate Don
Quixote; Stirner the creator appears as an egoist in the ordinary
sense, as Saint Sancho Panza.

Here, therefore, the other aspect of the antithesis of creator and
creation makes its appearance, each of the two aspects containing its
opposite in itself. Here Sancho Panza Stirner, the egoist in the

Szeliga, “Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum, Von Max Stirner”. — Ed.

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271

ordinary sense, is victorious over Don Quixote Szeliga, the selfless
and illusory egoist, is victorious over him precisely as Don Quixote by
his faith in the world domination of the holy. Who indeed was
Stirner’s egoist in the [ordinary] sense if not Sancho [Panza,] and
who his self-sacrificing egoist [if not] Don Quixote, and what was
[their mutual] relation in the [form in which it has so far existed if]
not the relation of [Sancho Panza Stirner] to Don Quixote [Szeliga?
Now as] Sancho Panza [Stirner belongs to himself as] Sancho only [in
order to make Szeliga as] Don Quixote [believe that] he surpasses
him in Don [quixotry,] and [in accordance with this role, as] the
presupposed universal Don [quixotry,] he takes [no steps] against the
[Don quixotry of his] former master (Don quixotry, by which he
swears with all the firm faith of a servant), and at the same time he
displays the cunning already described by Cervantes. In actual
content he 4 is, therefore, the defender of the practical petty
bourgeois, but he combats the consciousness that corresponds to the
petty bourgeois, a consciousness which in the final analysis reduces
itself to the idealising ideas of the petty bourgeois about the
bourgeoisie to whom he cannot attain.

Thus, Don Quixote now, as Szeliga, performs mental services for
his former armour-bearer.

How greatly Sancho in his new “transformation” has retained his
old habits, he shows on every page. “Swallowing” and “consuming”
still constitute one of his chief qualities, his “natural timidity” has still
such mastery over him that the King of Prussia and Prince Heinrich
LXXII become transformed for him into the “Emperor of China” or

the “Sultan” and he ventures to speak only about the “G a

chambers”; he still strews around him proverbs and moral sayings
from his knapsack, he continues to be afraid of “spectres” and even
asserts that they alone are to be feared; the only difference is that
whereas Sancho in his unholiness was bamboozled by the peasants in
the tavern, now in a state of saintliness he continually bamboozles
himself.

But let us return to Szeliga. Who has not long ago discovered the
hand of Szeliga in all the “phrases” which Saint Sancho put into the
mouth of his “you”? And it is always possible to discover traces of
Szeliga not only in the phrases of this “you”, but also in the phrases
in which Szeliga appears as creator, i.e., as Stirner. But because
Szeliga is a creation, he could only figure in Die heilige Familie as a
“mystery ” . The revelation of this mystery was the task of Stirner the
creator. We surmised, of course, that some great, holy adventure was

German. — Ed.

272

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

at the root of this. Nor were we deceived. The unique adventure
really has never been seen or heard of and surpasses the adventure
with the fulling mills in Cervantes’ twentieth chapter.

3. The Revelation of John the Divine,
or ( ‘The Logic of the New Wisdom ”

In the beginning was the word, the logos. In it was life, and the life
was the light of men. And the light shone in darkness and the
darkness did not comprehend it. That was the true light, it was in the
world, and the w'orld did not know it. He came into his own, and his
own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he
power to become owners, who believe in the name of the unique.
[But who] has ever [seen] the unique [?] a

[Let] us now [examine] this “light of the [world’’ in “the] logic of
the new wisdom [”, for Saint] Sancho does not rest content with his
previous [destructions].

[In the case of our] “unique” author, it is a matter [of course that]
the basis of his [genius lies] in the brilliant [series of personal]
advantages [which constitute] his special [virtuosity] of thought.
[Since] all these advantages have already been extensively demon-
strated, it suffices here to give a brief summary of the most
important of them: carelessness of thought — confusion — incoher-
ence — admitted clumsiness — endless repetitions — constant con-
tradiction with himself — unequalled comparisons — attempts to in-
timidate the reader — systematic legacy-hunting in the realm of
thoughts by means of the levers “you”, “it”, “one”, etc., and crude
abuse of the conjunctions for, therefore, for that reason, because,
accordingly, but, etc. — ignorance — clumsv assertions — solemn frivol-
ity — revolutionary phrases and peaceful thoughts — biuster — bom-
bastic vulgarity and coquetting with cheap indecency — elevation of
Nante the loafer 83 to the rank of an absolute concept — dependence
on Hegelian traditions and current Berlin phrases — in short, sheer
manufacture of a thin beggar’s broth (491 pages of it) in the
Rumford manner.

Drifting like bones in this beggar’s broth are a whole series of
transitions, a few specimens of which we shall now' give for the
amusement of the German public depressed as it is:

“Could we not — now, however — one sometimes shares — one can then — to the
efficacy of ... belongs especially that which one frequently ... hears called — and that is
to say — to conclude, it can now be clear — in the meantime — thus it can, incidentally, be

a John 1:1, 4-5, 9-12, 18 (paraphrased). — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

273

thought here — were it not for — or if, perhaps, it were not — progress from ... to the
point that ... is not difficult — from a certain point of view it is argued approximately
thus — for example, and so on ”, etc., and “it is to that” in all possible “transformations”.

We can at once mention here a [logical] trick about which [it is
impossible] to decide whether it owes [its] existence to the [lauded]
efficiency of Sancho [or to] the inefficiency of his [thinking]. This
[trick consists] in seizing on [one aspect], treating it as if it were the
sole [and only] aspect so far known of an idea [or] concept which [has
several well]-defined aspects, foisting this aspect [on the concept as]
its sole characteristic and then setting [against it every other] aspect
under a [new name, as] something original. This is how the concepts
of freedom and peculiarity are dealt with, [as] we shall see later. 3

Among the categories which owe their origin not so much to the
personality of Sancho, as to the universal distress in which the
German theoreticians find themselves at the present time, the first
place is taken by trashy distinction, the extreme of trashiness. Since
our saint immerses himself in such “soul-torturing” antitheses as
singular and universal, private interest and universal interest,
ordinary egoism and selflessness, etc., in the final analysis one arrives
at the trashiest mutual concessions and dealings between the two
aspects, which again rest on the most subtle distinctions — distinctions
whose existence side by side is expressed by “ also ” and whose
separation from each other is then maintained by means of a
miserable “ insofar as”. Such trashy distinctions, for instance, are:
how people exploit one another, but none does so at the expense of
another, the extent to which something in me is inherent or suggested;
the construction of human and of unique work, existing side by side,
what is indispensable for human life and what is indispensable for
unique life; what belongs to personality in its pure form and what is
essentially fortuitous, to decide which Saint Max, from his point of
view, has no criterion at all; what belongs to the rags and tatters and
what to the skin of the individual; what by means of denial he gets rid
of altogether or appropriates, to what extent he sacrifices merely his
freedom or merely his peculiarity, in which case he also makes a
sacrifice but only insofar as, properly speaking, he does not make a
sacrifice; what brings me into relation with others as a link or as a
personal relation. Some of these distinctions are absolutely trashy,
others — in the case of Sancho at least — lose all meaning and
foundation. One can regard as the peak of these trashy distinctions
that between the creation of the worldby the individual and the impulse
which the individual receives from the world. If, for example, he had

3 See this volume, pp. 305-09. — Ed.

274

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

gone more deeply here into this impulse, into the whole extent and
multifarious character of its influence on him, he would in the end
have discovered the contradiction that he is as blindly [dependent] on
the world as he [egoistically] and ideologically creates [it]. (See: “My
Self-Enjoyment” a .) He [would not then have put] side by side [his“]
also” and “insofar as ”, [any more than] “human” work [and]
“unique” work; he would not have opposed one to the other,
therefore one would [not have] attacked the other [in the rear,] and
the “egoist in agreement [with himself”] would not be completely
[subordinated to himself] — but we [know] that the latter did not need
to be [presupposed] because from the outset this was the point of
departure.

This trashy play with distinctions occurs throughout “the book”; it
is a main lever also for the other logical tricks and particularly takes
the form of a moral casuistry that is as self-satisfied as it is
ridiculously cheap. Thus, it is made clear to us by means of examples
how far the true egoist has the right to tell lies and how far he has
not; to what extent the betrayal of confidence is “despicable” and to
what extent it is not; to what extent the Emperor Sigismund and the
French King Francis I had the right to break their oath 84 and how far
their behaviour in this respect was “disgraceful”, and other subtle
historical illustrations of the same sort. Against these painstaking
distinctions and petty questions there stands out in strong relief the
indifference of our Sancho for whom it is all the same and who
ignores all actual, practical and conceptual differences. In general we
can already say now that his ability to distinguish is far inferior to his
ability not to distinguish, to regard all cats as black in the darkness of
the holy, and to reduce everything to anything — an art which finds
its adequate expression in the use of the apposition.

Embrace your “ass”, Sancho, you have found him again here. He
gallops merrily to meet you, taking no notice of the kicks he has been
given, and greets you with his ringing voice. Kneel before him,
embrace his neck and fulfil the calling laid down for you by
Cervantes in Chapter XXX.

The apposition is Saint Sancho’s ass, his logical and historical
locomotive, the driving force of “the book”, reduced to its briefest
and simplest expression. In order to transform one idea into
another, or to prove the identity of two quite different things, a few
intermediate links are sought which partly by their meaning, partly
by their etymology and partly by their mere sound can be used to
establish an apparent connection between the two basic ideas. These
links are then appended to the first idea in the form of an apposition,

a See this volume, p. 422. — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

275

and in such a way that one gets farther and farther away from the
starting-point and nearer and nearer to the point one wants to reach.
If the chain of appositions has got so far that one can draw a
conclusion without any danger, the final idea is likewise fastened on
in the form of an apposition by means of a dash, and the trick is
done. This is a highly recommendable method of insinuating
thoughts, which is the more effective the more it is made to serve as
the lever for the main arguments. When this trick has been
successfully performed several times, one can, following Saint
Sancho’s procedure, gradually omit some of the intermediate links
and finally reduce the series of appositions to a few absolutely
essential hooks.

The apposition, as we have seen above, can also be reversed and
thus lead to new, even more complicated tricks and more astounding
results. We have seen there, too, that the apposition is the logical
form of the infinite series of mathematics. 3

Saint Sancho employs the apposition in two ways: on the one hand,
purely logically, in the canonisation of the world, where it enables
him to transform any earthly thing into “the holy”, and, on the
other hand, historically, in disquisitions on the connection of various
epochs and in summing them up, each historical stage being reduced
to a single word, and the final result is that the last link of the
historical series has not got us an inch farther than the first, and in
the end all the epochs of the series are combined in a single abstract
category like idealism, dependence on thoughts, etc. If the historical
series of appositions is to be given the appearance of progress, this is
achieved by regarding the concluding phrase as the completion of
the first epoch of the series, and the intermediate links as ascending
stages of development leading to the final, culminating phrase.

Alongside the apposition we have synonymy, which Saint Sancho
exploits in every way. If two words are etymologically linked or are
merely similar in sound, they are made responsible for each other, or
if one word has different meanings, then, according to need, it is
used sometimes in one sense and sometimes in the other, while Saint
Sancho makes it appear that he is speaking of one and the same thing
in different “refractions”. Further, a special branch of synonymy
consists of translation, where a French or Latin expression is
supplemented by a German one which only half-expresses it, and in
addition denotes something totally different; as we saw above, for
example, when the word “ respektieren” was translated “to experience
reverence and fear”, and so on. One recalls the words Staat, Status,

a See this volume, p. 156. — Ed.

276

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

Stand, Notstand, etc. a In the section on communism we have already
had the opportunity of observing numerous examples of this use of
ambiguous expressions. Let us briefly examine an example of
etymological synonymy.

“The word ‘ Gesellschaf t’ b is derived from the word ‘Sal’. If there are many people
in a Saal, c then the Saal brings it about that thev are in society. They are in society
and they constitute at most a salon society, since they talk in conventional salon phrases.
If real intercourse takes place, it should be regarded as independent of society” (p. 286).

Since the “word ‘ Gesellschaf f is derived from ‘SaF” (which,
incidentally, is not true, for the original roots of all words are verbs)
then “Sat” must be equivalent to “Saal”. But “SaG in old
High-German means a building; Kisello, Geselle — from which
Gesellschaft is derived — means a house companion; hence “Saa /” is
dragged in here quite arbitrarily. But that does not matter; “ Saal” is
immediately transformed into “salon”, as though there was not a gap
of about a thousand years and a great many miles between the old
High-German “SaG and the modern French “salon”. Thus society is
transformed into a salon society, in which, according to the German
philistine idea, an intercourse consisting only of phrases takes place
and all real intercourse is excluded. — Incidentally since Saint Max
only aimed at transforming society into “the holy”, he could have
arrived at this by a much shorter route if he had made a somewhat
more accurate study of etymology and consulted any dictionary of
word roots. What a find it would have been for him to discover there
the etymological connection between the words “ Gesellschaft ” and
“ selig ”; Gesellschaft — selig — heilig — das Heilige d — what could look
simpler?

If “Stirner’s” etymological synonymy is correct, then the commu-
nists are seeking the true earldom, the earldom as the holy. As
Gesellschaft comes from Sal, a building, so Graf (Gothic garavjo )
comes from the Gothic ravo, house. Sal, building =ravo, house;
consequently Gesellschaf t= Graf schaftf The prefixes and suffixes are
the same in both words, the root syllables have the same meaning —
hence the holy society of the communists is the holy earldom, the
earldom as the holy — what could look simpler? Saint Sancho had an
inkling of this, when he saw in communism the perfection of the
feudal system, i.e., the system of earldoms.

a See this volume, p. 212. — Ed.
b Society. — Ed.
c Hall, room. — Ed.

Society — blessed — holy — the holy. — Ed.
e Earl. — Ed.

{ Earldom. — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

277

Synonymy serves our saint, on the one hand, to transform
empirical relations into speculative relations, by using in its
speculative meaning a word that occurs both in practical life and in
philosophical speculation, uttering a few phrases about this specula-
tive meaning and then making out that he has thereby also criticised
the actual relations which this word denotes as well. He does this
with the word speculation. On page 406, “speculation” “appears”
showing two sides as one essence that possesses a “dual manifesta-
tion” — O Szeliga! He rages against philosophical speculation and
thinks he has thereby also settled accounts with commercial specula-
tion, about [which] he knows nothing. On the other hand, this
svnonvmy enables him, a concealed petty bourgeois, to transform
bourgeois relations (see what was said above in dealing with “com-
munism” about the connection between language and bourgeois re-
lations 3 ) into personal, individual relations, which one cannot attack
without attacking the individuality, “peculiarity” and “uniqueness”
of the individual. Thus, for example, Sancho exploits the etymo-
logical connection between Geld! 3 and Geltung, c Vermogen d and
vermogen , e etc.

Synonymy, combined with the apposition, provides the main lever
for his conjuring tricks, which we have already exposed on countless
occasions. To give an example how easy this art is, let us also perform
a conjuring trick a, la Sancho.

WechselJ as change, is the law of phenomena, says Hegel, This is the
reason, “Stirner” could continue, for the phenomenon of the
strictness of the law against false bills of exchange; for we see here the
law raised above phenomena, the law as such, holy law, the law as the
hoiv, the holy itself, against which sin is committed and which is
avenged in the punishment. Or in other words: Wechsel “in its dual
manifestation”, as a bill of exchange ( lettre de change) and as change
( changement ), leads to Verfall 8 (echeance and decadence ). Decline as a
result of change is observed in history, inter alia, in the fall of the
Roman Empire, feudalism, the German Empire and the domination
of Napoleon. The “transition from” these great historical crises “to”
the commercial crises of our day “is not difficult”, and this explains
also why these commercial crises are always determined by the expiry
of bills of exchange.

d See this volume, p. 231. — Ed.
b Money. — Ed.
c Worth, value, validity. — Ed.

Wealth, property, ability, capability.-; — Ed.
e To be able, capable. — Ed.

Change, bill of exchange. — Ed.

8 Expiry, falling due (of bill); decline, decay. — Ed.

278

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

Or he could also, as in the case of “ Vermogen ” and “Geld' , justify
the “ Wechsel” etymologically arid “from a certain point of view argue
approximately as follows”. The communists want, among other
things, to abolish the Wechsel (bill of exchange). But does not the
main pleasure of the world lie precisely in Wechsel (change)? They
want, therefore, the dead, the immobile, China — that is to say, the
perfect Chinese is a communist. “Hence” communist declamations
against Wechselbrieie a and Wechsler. As though every letter were not
a Wechselbriei, a letter that notes a change, and every man not a
Wechselnder, a Wechsler.

To give the simplicity of his construction and logical tricks the
appearance of great variety, Saint Sancho needs the episode. From
time to time he “ episodically ” inserts a passage which belongs to
another part of the book, or which could quite well have been left out
altogether, and thus still further breaks the thread of his so-called
argument, which has already been repeatedly broken without that.
This is accompanied by the naive statement that “we” “do not stick
to the rules”, and after numerous repetitions causes in the reader a
certain insensitiveness to even the greatest incoherence. When one
reads “the book”, one becomes accustomed to everything and finally
one readily submits even to the worst. Incidentally, these episodes (as
was only [to be] expected from Saint Sancho) are themselves only
imaginary and mere repetitions under [other guises] of phrases
encountered hundreds of times [already].

After Saint Max has [thus displayed] his personal qualities, and
then revealed himself as [“ appearance" and] as “ essence ” in the distin-
ction, [in] synonymy and in the episode, [we] come [to the] true
culmination and completion of logic, the “concept”.

[The] concept is the “ego” (see Hegel’s Logik, Part 3), logic [as the
ego]. This is the pure relation [of the] ego to the world, a relation
[divested] of all the real relations that exist for it; [a formula] for
all the equations to [which the holy] man reduces mundane
[concepts]. It was already [revealed] above that by applying this
formula to all sorts of things Sancho merely makes an unsuccessful
“attempt” to understand the various pure determinations of
reflection, such as identity, antithesis, etc.

Let us begin at once with a definite example, e.g., the relation
between the “ego” and the people.

* Here and above the authors play on the different meanings of the words Wechsel
(change, bill of exchange), Wechselbrief (bill of exchange), Wechsler (money-changer)
and Wechselnder (a changing person). — Ed.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max 279

I am not the people.

The people = non-I
I = the non-people.

Hence, I am the negation of the people, the people is dissolved in
me.

The second equation can be expressed also by an auxiliary
equation:

The people’s ego is non-existent,
or:

The ego of the people is the negation of my ego.

The whole trick, therefore, consists in: 1) that the negation which
at the outset belonged to the copula is attached first to the subject
and then to the predicate; and 2) that the negation, the “not”, is,
according to convenience, regarded as an expression of dissimilarity,
difference, antithesis or direct dissolution. In the present example it
is regarded as absolute dissolution, as complete negation; we shall
find that — at Saint Max’s convenience — it is used also in the other
meanings. Thus the tautological proposition that I am not the people
is transformed into the tremendous new discovery that I am the
dissolution of the people.

For the equations given above, it was not even necessary for Saint
Sancho to have any idea of the people; it was enough for him to
know that I and the people are “totally different names for totally
different things”; it was sufficient that the two words do not have a
single letter in common. If now there is to be further speculation
about the people from the standpoint of egoistical logic, it suffices to
attach any kind of trivial determination to the people and to “I”
from outside, from day-to-day experience, thus giving rise to new
equations. At the same time it is made to appear that different
determinations are being criticised in different ways. We shall now
proceed to speculate in this manner about freedom, happiness and
wealth :

Basic equations: The people — non-I.

Equation No. 1: Freedom of the people = Not my freedom.

Freedom of the people = My non-freedom.

Freedom of the people = My lack of freedom.

(This can also be reversed, resulting in the grand proposition: My
lack of freedom = slavery is the freedom of the people.)

Equation No. 2: Happiness of the people = Not my happiness.

Happiness of the people = My non-happiness.

Happiness of the people = My unhappiness.

1 1 —2086

280

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels

(Reversed equation: My unhappiness, my distress, is the happiness
of the people.)

Equation No. 3: Wealth of the people = Not my wealth.

Wealth of the people = My non-wealth.

Wealth of the people = My poverty.

(Reversed equation: My poverty is the wealth of the people.) This
can be continued ad libitum and extended to other determinations.

For the formation of such equations all that is required, apart from
a very general acquaintance with such ideas as Stirner can combine in
one notion with “people”, is to know the positive expression for the
result obtained in the negative form, e.g., “poverty” — for “non-
wealth”, etc. That is to say, as much knowledge of the language as
one acquires in everyday life is quite sufficient to arrive in this way at
the most surprising discoveries.

The entire trick here, therefore, consisted in transforming
not-my-wealth, not-my-happiness, not-my-freedom into my non-
wealth, my non-happiness, my non-freedom. The “not”, which in
the first equation is a general negation that can express all possible
forms of difference, e.g., it may merely mean that it is our common,
and not exclusively my, wealth — this “not” is transformed in the
[second] equation into the negation of my wealth, [my] happiness,
etc., and ascribes to me [non-happiness], unhappiness, slavery.
[Since] I am denied some definite form of wealth, [the people’s]
wealth but by no means [wealth] in general, [Sancho believes
poverty] must be ascribed to me. [But] this is also [brought about] by
expressing my non-freedom in a positive way and so transforming it
into my [“lack of freedom”]. But [my non-freedom] can, of course,
also mean hundreds [of other] things — e.g., my [“lack of freedom]”,
my non-freedom from [my] body, etc.

We started out just now from the second equation: the people =
non-I. We could also have taken the third equation as our starting-
point: I = the non-people, and then, in the case of wealth for
example, according to the same method, it would be proved in the
end that “my wealth is the poverty of the people”. Here, however,
Saint Sancho would not proceed in this way, but would dissolve
altogether the property relations of the people and the people itself,
and then arrive at the following result: my wealth is the destruction
not only of the people’s wealth but of the people itself. This shows
how arbitrarily Saint Sancho acted when he transformed non-wealth
into poverty. Our saint applies these different methods higgledy-
piggledy and exploits negation sometimes in one meaning and
sometimes in another. Even “anyone who has not read Stirner’s
book” “sees at once” ( Wigand , p. 191) what confusions this is liable to
produce.

The German Ideology. The Leipzig Council. III. Saint Max

281

In just the same way the “ego” “operates” against the state.

I am not the state.

State =non-I.

I = “Negation” of the state.

Nothing of the state=I.

Or in other words: I am the ‘‘creative nothing” in which the state is
swallowed up.

This simple melody can be used to ring the changes with any
subject.

The great proposition that forms the basis of all these equations is:
I am not non-I. This non-I is given various names, which, on the one
hand, can be purely logical, e.g., being-in-itself, other-being, or, on
the other hand, the names of concrete ideas such as the people, state,
etc. In this way the appearance of a development can be produced by
taking these names as the starting-point and gradually reducing
them — with the aid of equations, or a series of appositions — again to
the non-ego, which was their basis at the outset. Since the real
relations thus introduced figure only as different modifications of
the non-ego, and only nominally different modifications at that — no-
thing at all need be said about these real relations themselves. This is
all the more ludicrous since [the real] relations are the relations [of
the individuals] themselves, and declaring them to be relations [of
the non]-ego only proves that one knows nothing about them. The
matter is thereby so greatly simplified that even “the great majority
consisting of innately limited intellects” can learn the trick in ten
minutes at most. At the same time, this gives us a criterion of the
“uniqueness” of Saint Sancho.

Saint* Sancho further defines the non-ego opposed to the ego as
being that which is alien to the ego, that which is the alien. The
relation of the non-ego to the ego is “therefore” that of alienation
[ Entfremdung ]. We have just given the logical formula by which
Saint Sancho presents any object or relation whatsoever as that which
is alien to the ego, as the alienation of the ego; on the other hand,
Saint Sancho can, as we shall see, also present any object or relation
as something created by the ego and belonging to it Apart, first of all,
from the arbitrary way in which he presents, or does not present, any
relation as a relation of alienation (for everything can be made to fit
in the above equations), we see already here that his only concern is
to present all actual relations, [and also] actual individuals, [as
alienated] (to retain this philosophical [expression] for the time
being), to [transform] them into the wholly [abstract] phrase of
alienation. Thus [instead] of the task of describing [actual] individu-
als in their [actual] alienation and in the empirical relations of this

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